Ep. #694: The Best of Muscle For Life: Bodybuilding Show Prep, Cardio or Weights First, and No Excuses

Hello and welcome to the latest and greatest episode of Muscle for Life. I’m Mike Matthews and thank you for joining me today. Now, I have recorded hundreds of episodes of Muscle for Life and I’ve. Talked about a huge variety of things related to health, fitness, lifestyle mindsets, ranging from the basics of diet and exercise, like energy and macronutrient, balance and progressive overload, and training frequency and volume to fads like the ketogenic and carnivore diet and collagen protein to more unfamiliar territories like body weight, set point, and fast.

Cardio and some episodes resonate with my crowd more than others, but all of them contain at least a few key takeaways that just about anyone can benefit from. At least that’s what I tell myself. That’s what helps me sit down in the chair every day and do this, and as cool as that is. It poses a problem for you, my dear listener, especially if you are new here, and that is, ain’t nobody got time for that.

We’re talking about probably a thousand plus hours of content at this point. And while some people actually do make the time to listen to most or even. All of my podcasts, my Whizbang analytics tell me that while many listeners tune in on a regular basis, they don’t catch every installment of Muscle for Life.

Thus, they miss out on insights that could help them get even just a little bit better inside and outside the gym. Because if you just get a little bit better, consistently enough, that can add up to big results in the long. And people have also been telling me that they would like me to do more shorter multi topic episodes like my q and A’s and says You episodes.

And so I got an idea. How about a best of series of podcasts that contains a few of the most practical and compelling ideas, tips, and moments from. My most popular episodes going all the way back to the beginning. This way, people who are new in particular can quickly determine if this is the droid they’re looking for, if this podcast is for them or not, and then those who are regulars and enjoy what I’m doing, but just don’t have the time or inclination to listen to.

All of my stuff, and I do understand that I don’t take it personally. , you can also then benefit from the discussions and the episodes that you are not listening to in full. And you can also find new episodes to listen to without having to give an hour of your time to determine whether it was worth it or not.

So here we are with the best of Muscle for Life, and in this episode you’ll be hearing. Picked morsels from three episodes. The first is an interview I did with Dr. Eric Helms, and it is titled Eric Helms on the Science of Preparing for a Natural Body Building Show. And then there is a monologue that is titled, should You Do Cardio or Weightlifting First, what?

20 studies say, and finally, another motivational monologue called When You Can Do This, you can do anything. 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, lean, leaner, stronger, and thinner. Leaner, stronger, as well as the leading flexible dieting cookbook, the shredded. 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.

And I should also mention that you can get any of the audio books 100%. When you sign up for an Audible account, and this is a great way to make those pockets of downtime like commuting, meal prepping, and cleaning more interesting, entertaining, and productive. And so if you want to take Audible up on this offer, and if you want to get one of my audiobooks for free, just go to www.buy Legion, that’s b y legion.com/audible and sign up for your account.

So again, if you appreciate my work and if you wanna see more of it, and if you wanna learn time proven. And evidence-based strategies for losing fat, building muscle, and getting healthy, and strategies that work for anyone and everyone, regardless of age or circumstances. Please do consider picking up one of my best selling books, bigger, lean or Stronger for Men.

Thinner, leaner, stronger for women, and the shredded chef for my favorite fitness friendly recipes. All right, so let’s start with the highlights from the Eric Helms interview. And this was published back in October of 2016. So if you like what you hear, you can go find the full episode and check it out.

What are the 3, 4, 5 kind of biggest prep mistakes or myths that are kind of out there that you have to consistently disabuse people of and correct? You know, I’d say the, the, the most common one is just not dieting long enough. Mm-hmm. . And, um, it’s, it’s almost cliche to say that now, or at least it feels like, cause I’m preaching it all the time.

Mm-hmm. . But, um, it has multiple reasons why. I mean, one is that, uh, before. , I’d even say the early two thousands, the conditioning standard, uh, was lower. You know, the, the r the rarity of Strided glutes was, um, was, well, pretty rare. You know, like you’d see the, the one, the one show or the one guy in the show with the strided glutes, and he typically is getting very close to winning and natural body building where size isn’t as much of a dominating factor.

And then, If you looked at like the I P B Pro rights, you know, if you follow the other side of the sport, it wasn’t until probably the nineties where you started to see guys show up with starting glutes regularly. Uh, and it was pretty rare before that. So one is the conditioning standards. So what that means is that people were dieting, uh, under the constraints of a different system before, so they didn’t need to get quite as lean.

Hmm. And, uh, you know, the. , the hard leaner you get, the harder it gets. So it kind of adds a disproportionate amount of time, uh, that that one should be dieting. And then a na natural body building holding onto holding onto your muscle in that face is also the hardest. So it kind of extends it further. So you’ve got the tradition going against the grain here of, of the idea that maybe, maybe we should be dieting longer.

Uh, and then you’ve also just got the unexperienced. of a, uh, a novice competitor. You know, these first time mistakes, they’re, they’re based on your experience level. And you, when you’ve never competed, you don’t quite know just how much body fat is really there that has to go. Mm-hmm. cause it, it all has to go, you know?

Um, especially when, when with the lights and how harsh it is and what might look good under the right lighting that you like and then doesn’t look so good or doesn’t look right under competition. Right? A hundred percent. Yeah. You, you, you spending 10 minutes to set up an Instagram photo and half netty lighting is not the same as being on stage for 20 minutes.

You know Exactly that natural lighting. The perfect, uh, yeah, I think, I think I see a little bit of ab vascularity. Right, exactly. So most of the time people need to lose sometimes as much as twice the amount they think they have to lose. Wow. Uh, I’ll tell you a funny story. Cause I’m, I’m not immune to this either.

In like 2005, I think I did my first quote, unquote cut. And, uh, I was 220 pounds at the time, I’m six foot. So it wasn’t that huge or anything. And I thought if I died down to 200 pounds, I’d be pretty close to stage ready. So fast forward about twice as long later than I thought it would take. I’m 198 and I’m probably.

14% body fat . So I, I just didn’t realize how fat I was. Yeah. You know, to, to get there. So I, I basically died to the point where I’d want to start a prep and, um, so yeah. Yeah, exactly. , and then I was right. I end up competing at about 178 in 2007, so. Wow. So there you go. So you’re in the process now. Um, we’ve go, we’ve gone over that.

You’re not, the last thing was, was training. Um, and so what is. So they’re kind of rolling along. Their cardio is low. They, I mean, at this point probably they haven’t changed much in the way of training volume yet. And, um, is there anything, uh, on the nutritional side that is worth highlighting? And that’s the everything Well, sure, yeah, that’s why I wanted to get training outta the way first.

So let’s roll it back to the very start. You know, um, so we, we’ve got an idea of what we’re gonna do with our cardio and our training throughout prep, and, you know, when you’re gonna start, how heavy you should be. Another thing that you wanna start, at least say, probably a. Before your diet starts is actually tracking calories.

Mm-hmm. , because if during contest prep, uh, you know, to make sure you keep losing fat, you’re gonna wanna be manipulating your calorie and macronutrient intake. And it’s a lot easier to do that, uh, and less of a kind of shock to your mental system. , if you have some time doing that, if you go from just eating and not tracking at all, uh, which there’s nothing wrong with, in my opinion, so long as you’re hitting a certain amount of, you know, protein and your calories are there, you’re getting some fruits and vegetables in and you know, you’re having protein around your workouts and you’re, you’re ticking a few boxes of making things as optimal as they can be in the off-season.

Yeah. Like for example, right now I’m ensure I hit a minimum amount of protein. I ensure I have at least four protein dosings a day. I ensure that I’m gaining or losing weight at the rate I want, and I make sure that I get, uh, you know, my multivitamin, my fish oil, and you know, taking my cine or whatever.

Yeah. And, um, or whatever. Yeah, definitely just creatine, , and then, uh, my cine, whatever, you know, just the DeVol . No, but so like I, I have, I have, yeah. The protons, right? I have the boxes. I tick in. Off-season, but it’s a lot less. It’s, it’s the minimal amount I can get away with tracking and still being optimal.

Yeah. Uh, which is a different formula than during contest prep, uh, where you wanna make sure almost all your bases are covered cuz things matter more. So anyway, if I was to prep and what I recommend, the people who are in kind of that state in the off-season or there maybe just tracking protein, is to start tracking all three macronutrients and weighing all their foods.

Uh, eating out. Uh, and getting very used to keeping like either My Fitness Pal or a Fit Day or my macros, whatever, uh, tracking going so that it’s not a huge pain in the ass. And that’s something they’ve integrated into their life and that is not a stressor when they start prep. And the side effect of this is you end up knowing exactly what your maintenance calories or you’re gaining calories are.

Yep. So you have a good idea of where to go. So if you know you’re maintaining, uh, roughly 3000 calories and you know that there’s roughly 3,500 calories in a pound of fat, and if you want to create an x. X amount of deficit you can play with that knowledge. So for example, I’ll use myself, I’m a 200 pound male and I want to try to lose, oh, let’s say 1% of my body weight to start.

It’s about the fastest you want to go, and then slower to like 0.5. So you’re always gonna try to fall between 0.5 to 1% of your body weight loss per week. And that’s body weight, not body fat. Um, obviously you wanna see body fat would be nice, right? It’d be great. And maybe that is happening. It’s just you, you, you can’t, there’s no good measure to check that.

Sure. So you really, am I maintaining performance? Am I looking better and am, am I losing at the right weight with my body weight? Right. Um, so anyway, let’s say I wanna lose 1% of my body weight per week. That’s two pounds, that’s roughly a 7,000 calorie deficit over the course of the week. So that means I need to ma create a 1000 calorie deficit on a day-to-day basis, mostly from my.

right? So let’s say I’m doing some cardio, so I, let’s go to 2200 on on low days. The last thing would just be laying out peak week. How does that look? Sure, yeah. So peak week, like you said, a, a big piece of it is just getting a pump and carving up to assist that pump. Uh, and I mentioned how blood pressure drops.

Well, you might have heard the recommendation from, you know, health organizations to reduce sodium intake, especially if you have a family history of. Uh, and while I don’t a hundred percent agree with that, and there are maybe some people genetically who that would make sense for, right? Uh, for the vast majority of people, if you have a high sodium diet, your blood pressure comes up for a little while and then it goes back down.

Uh, and we go, oh, so it’s not a chronic effect. Well, we don’t want a chronic effect as bodybuilders. It’d be great if our blood pressure could come up temporarily. Yeah. Uh, and that actually assists with getting a pump, uh, and all, all that stuff. So, um, I actually. Immediately prior to the pump up, I have my athletes, uh, take a high sodium, uh, quick acting meal or literally just put table salt on.

Yeah, just drink some salt Yeah. Down. Yeah. Which is not very tasty, but, um, yeah. Well you don’t need that much cuz it’s, what, what is it, 2.3 uh, grams of sodium per teaspoon of salt. So, exactly. So, yeah, a lot of the times it’s right around there putting a teaspoon of, of, of, of table salt into a glass of water, slamming it back.

and then get in their pump up. And that’s after they’ve been carving up that day. Now, uh, yeah, the, the peak week process is essentially just reversing flatness and, and reversing that, that blood pressure drop. Um, I don’t manipulate water. I don’t manipulate sodium. Mm-hmm. and I don’t even change the fat and, uh, and protein intakes that have typically been in a diet.

I might up the fat a little bit just cause I don’t want you in a deficit. Yep. Um, but typically it is, um, having. Carb intake levels that are closer to your refeed days, uh, and either a front or a back load approach. The neither, neither method is better, better than the other. I might’ve said a different answer a year ago or two years ago.

Um, but essentially probably the easiest for those listening way to do this is on Friday and maybe even Thursday. Thursday. Just take yourself out of a deficit and then, uh, through a carbohydrate in increase Friday, um, potentially go to. Slightly higher than, than, uh, maintenance level. Mm-hmm. . And then the day of the show be at maybe 80% between like, maybe, maybe the, the average of your low and your high days on diets.

You’re trying to like, maintain that kind of carved up look. And if you really wanna play a conservative and you, you don’t wanna spill over, which is relatively rare, just to have a refeed the day before the show, you know, and then have the average of your refeed and your low day on the day of the show, uh, that’ll prevent you from being flat in most cases.

That won’t get you fully, fully, fully peaked. But if you’re writing solo, it’s very difficult to self-analyze this, and you don’t want to be in a position where you’ve, you’ve spilled over and you can’t pull back. I used to recommend front loads to first timers, but they’re actually kind of complex, you know, having highs and then lows and highs against mm-hmm.

So I think that’s probably the easiest way to go for someone just listening. But, um, but essentially what you’re looking to do is just get someone’s flaction levels back up. Yep. And for what it’s worth, uh, just for the listeners, that’s what I’ve experienced myself when I’ve done it a few times, having to really lean for photo shoots is I just kept it simple like that.

The day before started eating a bunch of carbs, uh, and the, and the day of the. eating a bunch of carbs. Yep. And getting pumped. And I don’t know, I, I thought I, I think I looked pretty good. It worked. . Yeah, no, it definitely does. And it, keeping it simple is very effective.

All right. Well, that’s it for Eric Helms on the Science of Preparing for a Natural Body Building Show. Again, that episode was published October, 2016, so if you liked my choices, my audio snippets for you, then definitely go check out the whole interview, and I’d recommend that you check out every interview I’ve done with Eric because he is one of the most knowledgeable people in the evidence-based fitness space.

He’s an all around good guy. I like Eric. All right, so let’s move on to the next featured clips from the episode. Should you do cardio or weightlifting First? What 20 studies say? If your goal is to gain muscle and strength as quickly as possible, you want to do your weightlifting first. And in fact, if you really want to gain muscle and strength as quickly as possible, then you want to do as little cardio as possible.

In addition to the timing, uh, of it, you also want to keep your cardio to a minimum for two reasons. The first reason is cardio, uh, is fatiguing, and the more cardio you generally do the. General fatigue you are going to experience and that is going to make it harder to progress in your weightlifting workout.

And reason number two is more of a long-term reason. Um, there is research that shows that cardiovascular exercise interferes with some of these cellular signaling related to muscle buildings. So what that means is that the more cardio you do, Um, the more impaired your body’s muscle building machinery is, and even if the effects are fairly slight, they can add up to a significant reduction in muscle and strength gain over the long term.

A simple way to look at this is simply that resistance training and cardiovascular exercise send very different signals to the muscles in terms of what type of adaptation is supposed to occur. And so, for example, if you want maximum strength gain and maximum hypertrophy, if, if that’s the adaptation that you’re going for, you want to send.

As clear of a signal over and over and over to those muscles as possible, and that is the signal that resistance training produce. Now cardiovascular exercise sends a very different message to the muscles in terms of how they should respond to the stress. Getting bigger and stronger wouldn’t be an appropriate response because it would not help you run more miles.

In fact, it would get in the way of your ability to run more miles because you’d be carrying more weight and you’d have a lot of muscle that is optimized for producing. A lot of force quickly as opposed to muscles that are very resistant to fatigue and can contract repeatedly for long periods of time without crapping out.

And while we are on the topic of cardio and muscle building, generally, it’s worth noting that several studies have shown that the longer your cardio sessions are, the greater the interference effect is. And that is simply a technical term by the way. Cardio’s negative effects on muscle building Interference effect is how it is referred to in the scientific literature.

Now all that does not mean that you should not do any cardio. If you want to get jacked, there are a few good reasons to do cardio, even if your goal is to gain muscle and strength as quickly as possible. Now the first one is research shows that cardiovascular exercise can provide some health benefits that we probably can’t get from resistance training alone.

Um, and they are primarily cardiovascular in nature. Big surprise. So while we do know that resistance training is good for our heart health, there’s some evidence that doing some cardio in addition to the resistance training is even better for our. The second reason is there is evidence that improving your cardiovascular fitness can also improve your recovery times in between your resistance training sets.

So let’s say that you normally need to take two or three minutes to feel ready to. Give it your all and your next set. You know where your heart rate has come back down into a normal range. You’re not breathing too heavily anymore and you just feel generally ready to to go if it takes, again, two or three minutes.

Currently, if you were to improve your cardiovascular fitness, there’s a good chance that you might be able to shave, let’s say, 30 seconds off of that, which you then could use to get more work done in the time that you have for your resistance training. The third reason why meatheads. Consider including cardio in their routine, whether they’re cutting bulking or maintaining is when you’re cutting.

It helps you burn fat faster, of course, because it simply increases energy expenditure and especially in the case of something like high intensity interval training. Um, and you know, I’ve written about that and spoken about that extensively, so I won’t go off on that tangent. Um, if you want to maximize fat loss, do some.

Maybe an hour and a half, two hours max per week. And if you don’t want to do that for whatever reason, I would recommend going to the opposite end of the spectrum and simply adding some walking in your routine. The reason being is walking burns three to 400 calories per hour and is very low stress.

It’s very low impact. It is not going to cut into your recovery and it is not going to interfere much, if at all with your. Resistance training, so that interference effect, and this has been shown in studies. The interference effect in the case of walking is basically non-existent. It’s when you get into stuff like jogging, you get to that level of intensity regardless of the modalities, when you start to see it more.

As far as maintaining and lean bulking goes, including cardio in your routine. Again, even if it’s something as simple as a few hours of walking per week, it can, there’s evidence that it can help mitigate fat gain. It can make you more resistant to fat gain, primarily by improving your body’s, improving your muscle’s ability to burn fat for.

And by the same token, by keeping your body’s fat burning machinery running well, so to speak, including cardio in your maintenance and or lean bulk in your routines can also make your cuts faster. You can shave off probably a couple weeks from your post maintenance or post lean bulk cuts. There is a significant downside to doing your cardio before your resistance training or before your weightlifting, which is slower progress in your resistance training, and no real downside to doing it after, because if you keep it short, which I would recommend anyway, you are not going to interfere with those post-workout anabolic signals to any market.

And that is not just theory either. This has actually been demonstrated in a number of scientific studies. For example, one was published in 2016 and it was conducted by scientists at the University of Ula, and what they did is they took 42 men and they split ’em up into four groups. Group one was morning cardio, followed by weightlifting.

Group two was morning weightlift. Followed by cardio group three was evening cardio followed by weightlifting. And group four was evening weightlifting, followed by cardio, and everybody did the same workouts for the cardio workouts. It was some medium intensity stuff as well as some high intensity stuff.

And for the resistance training for the weightlifting, it was some full body workouts that progressed from lighter to heavier weights throughout the duration of the. And after 24 weeks, what the researchers found is that the people who did their weightlifting first gained a bit more strength over that period than the people who did their cardio first.

So if you can do your cardio workouts after your resistance training workouts, and you will minimize the cardio’s negative effects on your muscle building and your strength game. Um, even better than that, I should note before we wrap up here, is doing your cardio and your resistance training workouts on different days.

And if that’s not possible, separating them by at least six hours. And the reason being is a couple of studies have shown that separating your resistance training and your cardio workouts by anywhere from six to 24 hours can help further mitigate the interference effect, and thereby maximize the anabolic response from your resistance training workouts.

Okey dokey. That’s it for that one, and that was published back in December of 2018. So again, if you liked the highlights, go check out the whole episode. I’m sure you will like it even more. 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, lean, or stronger.

Thinly or stronger, as well as the leading flexible dieting cookbook, the shredded chef. Let’s move on now to the final episode. Featured in this installment of the Best of Muscle Life, and it is called When You Can Do This, you Can Do Anything. I want to talk about a simple change that you could make right now that would change everything.

Everything in your life, your health, your happiness, your fitness, relationships, finances, career. You fill in the rest, and what if I told you that this single factor is what really at bottom, what really sets extraordinary people apart from everyone else? What if this is. Alexander the great, one of my favorite characters in history became the king of the world.

How Thomas Edison became the king of inventing and how Ilan Musk is becoming the king of the impossible. And what if this is how you can find out just how special you can be as well? Find out what you are really capable. What if this is a magic bullet of sorts. Now what is it? Is it being obsessed? Is it being present?

Is it setting big goals, admitting mistakes, or inspiring others? Nope, it is not. It is far more primal than any of that in fact, Without this one thing, none of those things really matter. Now I have to warn you though, you’re probably not gonna like this thing. You’re probably going to feel like I am asking you to step out into a blizzard naked.

Like I’m asking you to force a dislocated limb back into place. So, ready? Here it is. It is simply refusing to make excuses. Refusing to make excuses for every failure. For every shortcoming. For every disadvantage. Refusing to believe that it’s okay to give up and take the easy road out. Refusing to look for reasons to be weak, refusing to blame anyone or anything else for your troubles and for your failure.

Speaking of Elon Musk, early on in his career in one of his first companies, he wooed investors by sharing that he approaches life and work as a samurai would, he’d rather kill himself than fail. And I think the life that he has lived so far is, uh, is a testament to that. For Alexander the greats part, whether he was saging a supposedly impregnable city or facing a supposedly invincible army, he refused to believe that he couldn’t succeed.

He said there is nothing impossible to him who will try and Thomas Edison’s. Take on this. Well, after he had gone through thousands of unworkable light bulb filaments, he was challenged by a reporter about his lack of results, and here was his reply. He said, results. Why, man, I’ve gotten lots of results.

If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work, I haven’t failed. I’m not discouraged because every wrong attempt discarded is often a step forward. Mindset is power. That is how people do the quote unquote, unimaginable. That is the big secret. So what about you? Well, the next time you say you are going to do something, whether it’s big or small, don’t do what most people do.

Don’t lard the decision with a code of maybe, or leave yourself little loopholes or little outs. Don’t saddle the decision. Ifs or butts and don’t allow excuses to wait in the wings. The next time you say you’re going to do something, channel your inner Ilan or Alexander or Thomas or whoever you might be most inspired by.

Instead, you’re either gonna do the thing or you’re going to die. And when you can really embody that mindset, you can do. And that’s it for the best parts of the motivational episode titled When You Can Do This, you Can Do Anything. And that one was published back in July of 2018. So if you want to go listen to the whole thing, please do.

And as always, I have a lot more good stuff on the way. Ellie stuff I think is good, including interview with David Tao, who. The founder of bar bend.com and who is on a mission to build the ESPN of Strength Sports. Another installment of Says You, where I’m gonna talk about people’s disagreements with me regarding incline, bench, pressing trap bar deadlifting, and doing accessory exercises, followed by another installment of q and a where I’m gonna answer questions about resistance bands getting laid.

Yes. And female lean bulking or lean. 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, strong.

Healthier and happier as well. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then simply subscribe to the podcast and you won’t miss out on any new stuff. And if you didn’t like something about the show, please do shoot me an email at mike muscle for life.com. Just muscle f o r life.com and share.

On how I can do this better. I read everything myself and I’m always looking for constructive feedback. Even if it is criticism, I’m open to it. And of course you can email me if you have positive feedback as well, or if you have questions really relating to anything that you think I could help you with, definitely send me an email.

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 soon.