Ep. #916: Research Roundup: Activating Your Glutes, Vitamin D Reduces Injury, Blood Flow Restriction For Muscle Growth, and More

Hello and welcome to muscle for life. I’m Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today for another installment in my research roundup series of episodes where I give you TLDR versions of studies that I think are interesting and practical research that can help us gain muscle and strength faster, lose fat faster, perform better, athletically feel better, live longer, get and stay healthier, and so on.

And in today’s episode, I am going to be talking about glute activation, boosting your glute activation in your lower body training, the 5 2 diet and why it may not be as effective at preserving muscle when you’re cutting as continuous dieting, how vitamin D can reduce the risk of injury and boost performance, and finally, blood flow restriction.

Training and how it can help you gain muscle as effectively as traditional training, even if you use much lighter weights and you don’t train to failure. Before we get to it, did you know that you don’t need supplements to build muscle, lose fat and get healthy, that you don’t need any pills, powders, and potions whatsoever.

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And try my supplements. Risk free. Okay, let’s start with glute activation when squatting. Do glute activation exercises boost glute activation when you squat? The study I am going to be discussing is called Activation Training Facilitates Gluteus Maximus Recruitment During Weight Bearing Strengthening Exercises.

And this was published on February 9th, 2022 in journal of electromyography and kinesiology. And I’m excited to talk about this because activation exercises are popular right now. Glute activation exercises are certainly popular every day. I’m in the gym. I see at least a couple of women, usually younger girls doing glute activation exercises before, or sometimes In between bigger exercises that they’re doing different squats and other lower body compound movements.

And these activation exercises are basically warmups that are designed to help a particular muscle fire harder or work harder in your workout. And while the benefits of activation exercises are often oversold. A study conducted by scientists at the university of Southern California shows that they.

might have some merit. So in this study, the researchers hooked 12 men and women up to an EMG and measured how active their glutes were during three sets of three reps of body weight squats and split squats. The participants then went home and they performed glute activation training twice per day for a week before returning to the lab to repeat the squat session.

And the glute activation Training sessions consisted of three exercises, side lying clamshells, side lying hip abduction, so lifting your leg up, and quadruped fire hydrants. Now, the participants, they completed three one minute isometric holds for each exercise, and they used resistance bands to make the exercises harder as necessary.

And the results were in the second squat session, the participants glutes were 57 percent and 53 percent more active in the squat and split squat respectively. So after just a week of doing the glute activation exercises, their glutes were working considerably harder in the squat and split squat exercises.

Now it is important to remember though that more muscle activation does not Always lead to more muscle growth, but given that these glute activation exercises are low risk, you are not going to get hurt doing them unless you really go out of your way to do them incorrectly, then including them in your workout routine.

If you are trying to maximize glute growth, that might Yield positive results. And so if you are very focused on growing your glutes, you might want to do what the participants did in this study daily glute activation exercises. Again, what they did is three, one minute sets. So isometric holds three, one minute isometric holds of side lying clamshells, side lying hip abduction, AB duction.

So away from the middle of the body and quadruped. Fire hydrants and use resistance bands. If you can hold positions for a minute easily, it should be quite hard at one minute. So you want to find the right amount of resistance for you to allow you to progress in the exercises. The idea isn’t to just do them, but to progress in them always.

Now, I should mention that one counter argument to doing that Is that any possible benefits from glute activation exercises might disappear as you get stronger on exercises like the barbell squat, for example, which forces your glutes to activate regardless of how sleepy they might be. And so it’s possible that doing body weight warmup exercises or even resistance band warmup exercises for your glutes every day, often.

Times people do them in the gym, which is okay. Although if you are fatiguing your glutes to any considerable degree before you squat, that is probably going to impair your performance on the squat. So just something to keep in mind. But regardless, it’s possible that as you get stronger, doing those exercises is like trying to blow on a bullet to make it fly faster.

Okay, let’s move on to the next study, which is on the 5 2 diet. And this diet may not be as effective at preserving muscle while cutting as continuous dieting. And the paper I will be referencing is called Intermittent Fasting and Continuous Energy Restriction Results in Similar Changes in Body Composition and Blood Pressure.

Muscle strength when combined with a 12 week resistance training program, and this was published on January 27th, 2022 in European Journal of Nutrition. So what is the 5 2 diet? Let’s just answer that one quickly. This is an intermittent fasting diet where you eat normally for five days and then you severely restrict your calories for two days, normally five or six hundred calories or so on those two days.

And so that’s your week five days of normal eating and then two days of severe calorie restriction. restriction and diets that involve any type of extended fasting periods have become very popular these days, particularly as a weight loss strategy. But many people who don’t want to just lose weight, but who want to lose fat and not muscle, which should be everyone’s goal, really improving body composition.

Many of those people are reluctant to try diets like this. The five to diet and other intermittent fasting protocols because it’s unclear how good they are for preserving muscle. And so this study, which was conducted by scientists at Swinburne University of Technology investigated that concern with the five to diet.

Researchers split 17, untrained 18 to 45-year-old men and women into two groups. You had a continuous diet group that maintained a 20% calorie deficit and consumed 1.4 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day, and you had a five two diet group who ate at maintenance. Calories five days per week, and then a 70 percent calorie deficit on the other two days and the five two group also had to consume 1.

5 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day on their non fasting days and then on their calorie restricted days, they were to get all of their calories between 12 p. m. and 6 p. m. and eat 1. 1 to 1. 2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day. per day, and this regimen, this dietary regimen ensured that all participants averaged a daily calorie deficit of 20 percent across the week and consumed an average of 1.

4 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day, which is slightly below optimal, but. It’s not terrible. The participants also performed a strength test at the beginning and the end of the study, which consisted of a three rep max test on the bench press and leg press and a single set of as many reps as possible on each exercise using 70 percent of their one rep max.

In addition, the participants performed three resistance training sessions per week, consisting of three sets of 12 to 15 reps of pushups, squats, rows, lunges, biceps curls, and dips. And the results of the strength tests revealed what you would expect. Both groups gained about the same amount of strength, but this is likely because all the participants were new to resistance training and therefore they were hypersensitive to its strength building effects.

The body composition results were a little more interesting, though, according to DEXA scans taken before and after the trial. Both groups lost about the same amount of weight and retained about the same amount of muscle. However, results from the ultrasound and the CT scans showed that the group that dieted continuously experienced larger increases in a few years.

Measures of muscle size, and while most of these differences failed to reach statistical significance, they probably would have if the study would have lasted longer than 12 weeks, and this suggests that continuous dieting. Maybe better for maintaining muscle when you are cutting or gaining muscle when you are cutting.

If you can do that, if you are new enough to resistance training to enjoy recomping, as it’s called now, that isn’t to say that continuous dieting will beat out all forms of intermittent fasting in improving body composition or that all forms of intermittent fasting are equally flawed. For example, if I were to follow an intermittent fasting protocol, all I would.

Not choose the five two protocol. I would choose the tried and true lean gains protocol. The sixteen eight protocol where you basically skip breakfast. You have an eight hour feeding window and so you start eating usually around twelve or one p. m. At least that’s how most people do it. And then your eating window goes until eight or nine p.

1. and no more calories after that. Research on that approach has shown that while it doesn’t benefit body composition in any special way compared to continuous dieting, you are not going to lose fat faster. On that type of diet, you are not going to gain more muscle and strength, but it doesn’t appear to perform any worse either.

And so my take currently on all forms of intermittent fasting really is the only good reason to do any of them is if you like them, if you prefer to eat that way versus a more traditional, continuous type of diet. Okay, next up, I have some supplement research on vitamin D and how it can reduce the risk of injury and improve performance.

And the study I am going to be discussing is called the effect of vitamin D supplementation in elite adolescent dancers on muscle function and injury incidence, a randomized double blind study. And this was published on June 12th, 2018 in international journal of sports physiology and performance. Most of us, we take vitamin D because of the many ways it can improve our health.

But in this study, researchers found that it might also be beneficial for people who are very focused on physical performance. So the scientists at the University of Wolverhampton, that is an awesome name, they split 71 elite Young dancers into a vitamin D supplement group and a placebo group, and both groups gave blood samples at the beginning of the trial and then took 120 pills over four days.

And in the vitamin D group, the pills contained a total of 120, 000 IU of vitamin D. And in the placebo group, the pills were inert, of course. And if that sounds like a dangerously large amount of vitamin D to take, it is a lot, but. Research shows that it is safe and it is effective provided you have clinical supervision.

It is not a protocol I’d recommend you just do for fun, but it is not dangerous per se. So the participants, they tested their strength using an isometric mid thigh pull. poll, which is a machine exercise that’s similar to a rack pole. And then they tested power using different jumping exercises. And for the rest of the four month trial, the participants recorded all of their injuries and they consumed no other supplements.

And at the end of the study, the participants gave another blood sample and then retested their strength and power. And what the results showed. Unsurprisingly, is that the vitamin D group increased their vitamin D levels significantly more than the placebo group. But they also increased their strength by about 7 percent while the placebo group lost a little bit of strength, which is interesting, but not mind blowing.

More surprising though, was the effect that vitamin D had on eating. Injury rates, the participants in the vitamin D group were more likely to be injury free, 40 percent versus about 36 percent and far less likely to have a traumatic injury about 11 percent versus about 32 percent than the placebo group.

And this suggests that taking vitamin D might make you less prone to injuries and traumatic injuries in particular and give you a little Performance boost to boot, making it a beneficial supplement for most athletes. Now, the exact mechanisms in play here are not clear, but given vitamin D’s role in supporting the immune system and the immune system’s role in muscle recovery and tissue repair, it seems possible that vitamin D boosts the body’s ability to repair itself.

Now, if you are not currently supplementing with vitamin D, you might be wondering what you should do. And my recommendation is to start with 2000 IU per day. That is a very standard amount that is safe and effective. Some people do need to take a bit more. to have adequate levels of vitamin D in their body.

But unfortunately, the only way to determine that precisely is to get some blood work done. And if you don’t want to do that, you can take 5, 000 IU per day. I personally wouldn’t recommend doing that. taking 10, 000 plus IU per day, even though some people do it, I myself take anywhere between two and 5, 000 IU per day.

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You can go learn about Triumph at buylegion. com, B U I L E G I O N dot com slash Triumph. Okay, next up, I have a paper for you on blood flow restriction. Training and how it can help you gain muscle just as effectively as traditional training, even if you don’t take sets to failure. So my source here is a paper called Acute Cellular and Molecular Responses and Chronic Adaptations to Low Load.

blood flow restriction and high load resistance exercise in trained individuals. And this was published on September 23rd, 2021 in Journal of Applied Physiology. And blood flow restriction training is an interesting topic because there are several studies now that show that it is a perfectly. Workable training technique, it probably deserves more attention specifically for certain use cases that I will get into in a few minutes.

But you don’t see many people doing it, probably because it looks silly. It looks like it is a waste of time, maybe even time consuming. dangerous. But it is neither of those things. Now, in this study, scientists at the University of Queensland compared the effects of training with lightweights and BFR and training with heavyweights without BFR.

So that’s traditional strength training on strength and BFR. muscle growth. They also examined other various molecular processes, but we don’t have to get into those here. So the researchers, what they did is they split 21 experienced male and female weightlifters into a BFR group and a traditional training group.

And then they instructed them to perform three lower body training sessions per week, consisting of squats, leg press, and knee extensions on days one and three and Bulgarian split squats and knee extensions on date. Two, the high load group, they began the study using weights that were about 75 percent of their one rep max for each exercise.

And they did four sets of eight reps with two minutes of rest in between the sets. And then the BFR group, they started using weights that were about 30 percent of their one rep max for each exercise and did one set of 30 reps followed by three sets of 15 reps with 45 seconds of rest in between. sets.

All the participants recorded how many reps in reserve they had after each set, meaning how many good reps left did they have, how close to muscular failure were they going. And participants in the high load group, they increased their weights if they had more than two reps in reserve after two consecutive sets.

sets. And then participants in the BFR group, they increased their weights if they had more than four reps in reserve after two consecutive sets. And what the results showed is that the squat one rep max increased in both groups, though it increased significantly more in the traditional training group.

So nine kilograms in the BFR versus 19 kilograms in the traditional group. group. And quad muscle size also increased about the same in both groups. And so the main takeaway from all of that is that BFR training is just as effective for building muscle as traditional strength training, despite Using much lighter weights and not taking each set to failure.

And while it was not as effective at increasing strength, that’s not surprising, of course, because strength is highly specific to the rep range that you train with. If you want to get strong, you want to do a lot of ones, twos, threes, fours, fives and sixes, and not a lot of sevens and eights and beyond.

And so then, should you be doing a lot of BFR training in the gym? No, not necessarily. There are a couple of situations where I think it makes sense to include BFR in your routine. If you have an injury, for example, and you are not able to use your normal training loads, BFR is a great way to get in effective training while you’re not injured.

Healing. It also can help you get in more volume. So let’s say you are doing 15 to 20 hard sets per week for one of your limbs, which of course is another drawback of BFR. You can only do it with your limbs with your arms and legs. But let’s say you are doing about as much volume of normal straight heavy working sets as you can, which is 15 to 20 hard sets per week.

If you try to do more than that for too long, You’re probably just going to get hurt, and you are not responding to that amount of volume because you are a very experienced weightlifter, and you have been doing that amount of volume for some time now, and your body has simply adapted to it. You could add a few blood flow restricted sets per week to get in some additional training stimulus without the additional wear and tear that normally comes from more volume.

And I should also mention that as you become a more experienced weightlifter, the most reliable way to continue gaining muscle is to continue gaining strength to get stronger. The correlation between strength and size becomes a lot stronger as you get more experienced. And so while this study does show that over the course of a couple of months, you can gain more or less the same amount of muscle with BFR versus traditional strength training.

If we were to do a study for nine months or several years, I would bet a shiny shackle or three that traditional strength training will win bigly in strength gain, of course, but will also win in muscle growth. 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 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.