Welcome everyone to the Noble Just Bacon podcast.

I'm your host, Dr.

Allen, and with me here today is Coach Beth to answer all of your burning health and fitness questions from around the social media world.

This is a rapid fire episode and we have a ton of great topics to cover, so let's get rolling.

1st on the docket today we've got a question from our Mighty Networks group that is going over how to properly warm up for weight training.

Now this is a great question, one we've covered a little bit before.

1.

I want to touch on again with some specifics, why I can specifically help you, how you can make this work for you.

And then at the end, have a secondary topic where we go over specifically how to warm up to maximize a personal record.

If you're going to go for a one Rep Max or A1 Rep PR, you do it slightly differently than if you're trying to warm up for a general training scenario.

So when we look at warmups, they've been shown to reduce injuries by around 30%.

But a general warm up itself doesn't appear to improve how much you lift.

Things like static stretching and foam rolling don't seem to help at all.

In fact, they might actually lower strength output, they might lower power output, and they don't reduce injuries.

So specific warmups are what you want to be doing.

You know, a a general dynamic warm up can be a great way to get started, but specific warmups seem to have a special benefit as far as improving performance and reducing injury risk because you're doing the same movement as you were doing with the specific warmups.

And specifically heavier specific warmups seem to work best of all.

So for our recommendations, we recommend performing two to three working sets are warm up sets where you where you lower reps each set while working up to 80% of your working weight on your last warm up set.

And in the question that we had had in Mighty Networks, one of the things that they had asked is as you get stronger, should that warm up weight increase?

The answer is absolutely, it should.

You should be looking at what you're working weight is and work up to about 80% on that last warm up set, whether that's the second or third set end.

So a good example of this would be you're doing a bench press.

You start off, do 12 reps at 40% of your working weight, do the next eight sets or 8 reps at 60% of your working weight, and then a final of four reps at 80% of that working weight.

If you work up in this manner, you're going to allow yourself to be able to warm up in a smart, intelligent way to the weight that you're working at.

If you're trying to stick to whatever warmups you did when you first began, you're going to be dramatically off and not actually challenging your musculature to the point where it is able to respond to those heavy training demands that you have because you have gotten a lot stronger.

So maxing out, I'd actually like you to put this down as a secondary topic, Beth, just so people understand, there's a difference here.

Maxing out progressions are a bit different now.

The Max out progression that I'm going to put into play here is specific for the majority of strength and resistance training techniques, squat, bench, deadlift.

Beth can give a little bit more insight into things like Olympic weightlifting power movements.

You might warm up differently than you would a pure strength movement and she is the expert there so she can have a little bit of a comment on that one.

I recommend when setting up a Max out progression doing your first set 8 reps at 50% of that one Rep Max.

Second set 4 reps at 65%, Third set 3 reps at 75%, Fourth set 2 reps at 85%.

Fifth set one Rep at 95% of your one Rep Max.

Then on your 6th set is when you start to go for your one Rep Max.

Now if you are progressing at one Rep Max correctly, that's not going to be much higher than that 95%.

If you're not feeling great that day, it's going to.

You're just going to try to match what you did before.

If you're feeling pretty good, if those warm up sets worked well, you might try for 105% or 107.5%, but people will look at this and they'll say Oh well, that's a lot of sets to be working up to A1 Rep Max.

Now keep in mind on these true one Rep Max testing days, you're probably not going to be doing a one Rep Max and then a ton of volume work afterwards.

You can spend some extra time getting into the groove here.

You know when you're working at 4 or 8 reps, you can take 2 minutes rest.

You can start to up that as you get closer towards that one Rep Max that you're attempting.

And by the time you're there, you're at 4 or 5 minutes rest in between those sets.

So you know when you're working in that 95%, you're going to take 5 minutes of rest before you do that one Rep Max.

You're going to take some time in between.

I promise you.

That sounds like a lot of volume.

It is not a lot of volume.

In fact, this is a a slightly modified version of what NASA does with their athletes.

It's actually where I started seeing the base for this information, and I modified it a bit based on how I saw that it was working for me and for clients over time.

And for those that don't know, I'm a United States Powerlifting Association coach.

And so I see these types of things in in powerlifting quite a bit in maximal strength movements.

And this works really, really well.

Just stay patient, work your way up, and this will work out for you.

Now, Beth, what do you think as far as power movements?

Because that can certainly be different.

Yeah, for Olympic weightlifting, you would never do that many work upsets to A1 Rep Max because you would be exhausted by the time you got there.

So like we, I, we would never do anything over 5 reps ever for any type of warm up.

Even stuff with like just the bar.

You, you the bar is really just like getting the joints loose type of deal.

Like you don't, you actually are not going to do a snatch or a clean and jerk with an empty barbell.

Like that's never going to be done on a, on a meet day.

Like you might do some, you know, snack like socks, press or something like that with an empty barbell just to kind of get your thoracic open.

But typically we follow a 531 progression for power movements for Olympic weightlifting.

And usually no more than about 5 attempts.

Like you don't want to, you don't want to kind of blow it out.

And then in the backroom before you're before you're maxing out, you don't want to do too many sets.

You can take a little bit less rest in your earlier sets because you're not going to be accumulating that fatigue.

And then obviously as you get up and wait and closer and closer to your one Rep Max, you're going to be taking more rest.

In a meat scenario, that rest is going to be contingent upon the lifters in front of you.

So it's kind of hard to gauge that, but if you're just talking about going into the gym to test your one Rep Max, I would probably have a lifter resting a minimum of 3 to 5 minutes between their, you know, 95%, a 105 percent or whatever it is that they're trying to go over their their Max.

And I typically do not have people hit old PRS.

So like if you there are a lot of people that.

I actually, I actually agree with that in, in case that was if, if I was confusing when I said that typically what I, what I mean when I say, hey, if you're 95%, you kind of gauge where you're, where you're feeling and if you don't feel like you're good enough to go over, don't go over.

But the goal of these progressions is to hit a new one Rep Max.

So even if that's like 102.5%.

Yeah, even if, even if you're yeah, even if you're throwing fractionals on there 100% yeah.

And especially for stuff like snap like these power movements, Olympic weight lifting.

It's it's both physical and mental, like the the mental awareness and presence that you have to have is a little bit different than like a one Rep Max bench.

Like I hate, I don't, I'm not trying to like knock powerlifting, but you don't have to freaking think when you're benching, squatting that like you.

Just so maybe, maybe it sounds better when it comes for me saying this squat, bench and deadlift.

I don't want to make anybody feel bad when they're first starting out and they're saying that these these lifts are difficult, but in the grand scheme of things they are not as technique sensitive.

That's what I mean.

As explosive movements.

And so there's a reason that we program differently for these things.

A snatch and a clean.

There's so many cues, like every single part of the lift, the moment it breaks off the floor until you get it overhead, if you lose focus or concentration for even literally a millisecond, the lift is done.

It's gone, it's done.

So they're like the mental fatigue that accumulates during a meet and during maxing out is very, very high.

I.

Actually think it's, it goes beyond that.

And, and I think that you're right there.

I think that it's actually more physically intensive as well, because I mean, think about this, you've done you've done both, you've done both powerlifting style Max outs and you've done Olympic weightlifting Max outs, right?

So when I ask you this, because you have some distinct experience in doing this, if you did A1 Rep Max deadlift or one Rep Max bench press like work up, does that feel after the, the, the actual movement?

Does that does your body feel better or worse compared to an Olympic weightlifting movement?

It feels better.

Right, right.

I, and, and my comment that I, I want to bring up because I want people to realize this is people think, well, if I'm lifting really heavy, it's really tough on my body or it's really CNS intensive.

It's not maximal strength is not that CNS intensive.

In fact, it's, it's nothing.

There's, there's very little CNS intensiveness going on there.

You can do a one Rep Max bench press or one Rep Max deadlift in literally 30 minutes.

You're later, you're completely fine and and it doesn't feel that bad, but you know, do super high Rep stuff, do power type movements and that hits your body and your recovery more than maximal strength work does.

And so it's not surprising that we we might have different techniques for doing these things.

Yeah, and I, I do have some lifters who especially on Snatch who just like to add like 5 lbs at a time.

And then what they end up they're, they're they have like 15 work up sets before they're one or Max.

And I'm like, y'all can't be doing this because by the time you get to that met, like you need to be more confident in taking larger jumps earlier in your sets and then maybe taking smaller jumps as you approach your Max.

But if you're just adding like 2.5 LB plates every attempt, you're going to a you're going to be there forever.

And then by the time you actually get to your working like where you would want to Max out you're, you're done.

Like you're physically spent.

So usually it's smarter to take larger jumps earlier in your in your work ups and then you know, as you get closer to your Max kind of back off of that a little bit.

Do you give any guidance at where you think people for for your clients we're talking about under these power conditions?

Do you give any guidance where like a percentage that you think that they should start out at so they're not like massively undershooting the beginning?

I actually give people specific weights to hit on their work UPS as you do that.

Based off of how like you feel that they work or do you do use percentages?

I use percentages of one Rep Max because that like I'd have to look, everybody is a little bit different.

I don't start with the same percentage for everybody because let's say somebody's one right?

Max snatch is 55 lbs, which is like barely like an empty barbell with two 10s on it.

They're they're, they're starting like the light.

The lightest you can go is the barbell.

It's 35 lbs.

So 35 / 55 is a much higher percentage than somebody who like, if I'm snatching 200, I'm not going to start with that same percentage.

So it, it, it is, it is kind of based on somebody's Max and what I know about that athlete.

And some people like that might have a very few work upsets because they're, they're bound by what the, the barbell actually weighs.

Like I can't, I can't make the barbell not weigh 35 lbs.

Yeah, I mean, that makes a lot of sense in things like snatch, which are so you're not lifting a ton of weight, you know, compared to like other lifts, like with with powerlifting type lifts.

I mean the the bar is typically for people that actually test Max's.

So like, I don't really want to make anybody feel bad if you're like, man, the bar is really heavy for me.

But if the bar is really heavy for you, you're probably just beginning.

You probably shouldn't be testing Max's to begin with on those types of things.

And I'm not saying the beginner should go out and test these things, but we don't run into the same issues in pure strength as what we're talking about here, which is why I was interested to see what you do, because I'm completely fine and saying, I don't know what I'm doing as far as Olympic weightlifting goes.

And I think that that, you know, my, my clients, you know, if you're really interested in Olympic weightlifting, Beth is a really good resource because she's the one that really knows that stuff.

But you know, in, in powerlifting and pure strength, about 50% for literally everybody is, is still a good shot for these types of things.

But for most people, the, the bar, you can get significantly more than the bar, you know, and, and, and so we don't typically have the same kind of constraints.

Now, if we were doing like a one Rep Max overhead press, we might get into some of those issues because overhead pressing seems to be, you know, relatively you lift less weight compared to the other big lifts.

But I, I don't have people test that unless they or like I want to test my, my overhead press and then that's where I take that individually.

OK, all right.

I like to go swimming immediately after my weight training.

I find it relaxing and then I go to the sauna.

Are there negative effects for my muscle growth if I do this a relaxing swim?

No, there's not going to be any negative effects.

It might actually make you feel a little bit better, might prevent soreness.

If you're new to lifting sauna.

People will hear me talk pretty commonly about about like ice bathing and make fun of it.

And like my stance on that is very, it's pretty hard.

There's almost zero reason to ice bathe and there's zero reason to ice bathe because it, it seems like it's all placebo.

All the benefits are massively overblown.

It lowers the adaptations from training and you know, people that love ice bathing are like, we'll just spread it out four to six hours from when you train and then it's fine.

That's not true.

No one has ever shown that in studies.

It's just what they say because then it allows you to kind of circumvent those studies that show that it's bad, so they make something up.

The adaptation to training is not just four to six hours after you train, it's two days for most people.

And so by throwing icing in there, you're probably attenuating some of those beneficial adaptations.

On top of that, when you look at the the mechanisms mechanistically, it doesn't seem to really help any of the mechanisms that would really be improving recovery.

Sauna is different and so I'm not as die hard against sauna and if people say that they'd like doing it and it's relaxing for them, I'm I don't really fight that a whole lot.

What I will say is there is some data suggesting that if you weight train soon after sauna, some metrics can be down maybe even the next morning.

So keep an eye on those things and see how you feel now.

There are apparent benefits to feelings of recovery with sauna, but there could be some performance detriments in some people.

So if somebody says I like to go for a relaxing swim, I like to hop in the sauna.

Are there negative effects?

Probably not really anything massive if you're not spending hours and hours in the sauna, as long as you're staying hydrated, replacing any lost electrolytes.

Because when you put yourself in that situation when you're in a sauna, you're certainly going to be losing things like sodium, you know, at increased rates.

So if you're replacing that, you're probably fine.

And it's probably not anything to worry about it.

If it adds to your life, certainly do it.

It's, it's, it's a fun thing.

I would just keep in mind that that if you're overdoing these things, they could have an effect.

But when someone says a relaxing swim, there's no way that they're doing anything that is so far beyond that it's going to cause any negative adaptations to muscle growth.

All right, I'm trying to add in cardio, but I have two little kids and I'm already weight training four days per week.

Do I just accept this as a season of my life or do I try to make more of an effort when I have limited time?

What I like to tell people is that if you're getting four days of weight training and you're doing the large majority of what you need to do, if you were watching 2 little kids, staying active in some manner is probably not super difficult for you.

Unless you're parking them on the couch and, you know, giving them an iPad, in which case you can probably get a, you know, a walking pad and and walk anyways while you watch them.

You can either just monitor your step counts, see how things are going.

I mean, certainly adding in some cardio would be optimal, but if it's unsustainable for you, it's unsustainable for you.

So is there a way when you have these two little kids to either incorporate them in this and essentially do both at the same time or tell yourself, I'm doing the best that I can to focus on the weight training?

Because the weight training, if you're going to choose one or the other, the weight training is probably what you should choose.

Now, when someone says that they have two little kids, I mean, the first thing that pops into my head is why not get a stroller that holds two kids and go for a walk?

Get them outside, you know, have some fun.

Go to the mall and I think that they still exist.

Go to Target, you know, walk these kids around.

You can do some of these things to be productive and get things done.

Take them around the grocery store to get your groceries like.

Well, I think I don't mean to interrupt you.

I think this person is actually speaking about like cardio cardio like because this is a, this is a member of our group who we have two weekly sessions of cardio programmed.

1 is a sort of more higher intensity interval type training and the other is his own 2.

So I don't think she's talking about just walking.

I think she's talking about getting the the adaptations that you and I have been talking about in some of these podcast, getting some of those cardiovascular adaptations through like traditional cardio and not just walking.

I mean, the only way to be able to do that is to get in the traditional cardio.

Right.

And so that that's, that's her question.

Like do I like how do I do that with these kids?

And I think she she went into more to that.

One of them is very young and one of them is like two or three because I think somebody and I even almost suggested this, like can one of them ride their bike with you while you run or something like.

7 month old and a three-year old.

Yeah, so too young for that.

But my recommendation to this person because we do have that three day option where you can lift for three days and then because she's already she's doing 4 days, we know that she can commit to four days.

So if we back off the lifting to three days and then have her do that 4th day and have that be her cardio day.

And then she can choose one or the other.

She can choose his own 2 or if she's shorter on time and she can do the high intensity.

Interval training, it's just going to depend on what she truly wants to prioritize in this phase of her life.

Right now, if she wants to prioritize the lifting, then she can stick with the four days of lifting and not really worry about cardio.

But if she does want to start paying attention to her cardiovascular health and start to get some of those adaptations that we're talking about, maybe bumping the weights down to three times a week, which is still adequate to do what she wants to do and then doing that 4th day, have that be her, her cardio day.

But I think this purse, the reason I interrupted was I think this person is specifically talking about cardio in the sense of more than just.

The movement for for like bad loss and stuff like that.

Yeah, I mean, in that case too, I would your recommendation of either, you know, a more endurance or a, or a, a higher intensity.

The real answer is doing exactly what is most sustainable long term for you.

If I had a recommendation, it would probably be the higher intensity because that's an adaptation that you're going to lack a little bit more in the situation that she's talking about.

But I wouldn't get hung up on that.

If that's something that is is, you know, I just don't want to do that.

You know, it's it's so and having those two kids, because I didn't see that they had that.

There was a conversation about the ages of the kids.

I mean, what you talked about with like maybe having the kid ride a bike while she jogs or something like that.

Maybe she gets a bike too with that little baby seat in the back to put the three month old in and then go for a ride with the the seven-year old.

That could be a really good option.

We have a neighbor, you know, just as an example, that every

4:00 PM every night takes his kid on the back of his, his bikes.

That kids, that kids.

I know exactly who you're talking about.

Yeah, that kids got to be like 1, you know, a little bit older now.

When we first started watching them, that kid was very young.

Yeah, so this is a dad.

He there's a little like one of the people that lives down the street from us, has a daycare out of her house and he picks up his son every day And he wherever he lives, I don't know where he lives, but he rides his bike to the house, puts his kid in the little kid seat behind him, straps the helmet on and then rides home.

And that's hit like you can tell that he's doing this to.

Keep his cardio out to get now he's picking the kid up on a bike.

He could have been doing it in a car.

And so this is a really.

Good thing.

I mean, the other, the other thing that I could think of in this situation is in most places these days, not where we live, but in most places, there are options of gyms with child care.

Yeah.

And so maybe that's an option.

Does do you know if Planet Fitness has those available?

I would think that that might be one of the places that's most likely to have that.

And even if you you prefer going to a different gym, maybe one or two days a week, you go to that gym because if that's $10 a day or a month, that's not going to break the bank.

It's a.

Little bit more than that now because of inflation, but yeah.

But I'm just thinking like $10.

A month.

Or, or roughly as essentially you're paying for daycare is huge, you know, if you, if you have that offered.

So that's, that's another option that a lot of places on the mainland have and something to consider.

I I overall, I think that, you know, the fact that she is making health and fitness a priority in her life is the most important thing.

And so give yourself a little bit of grace, think about some of the options that we've had.

Anybody that is having this question of how to work these things into their lives.

And it doesn't have to be because of kids, but you know, concurrent movement can be a very beneficial thing if you can incorporate it with those people in your life.

And and yeah, I mean, you've got some options out there.

The question is just going to be what is sustainable, what can fit within the time constraints that you have, and what will your kids tolerate?

That's another another fun part of that equation on an aggressive cutting going into maintenance, should I keep the same step goal and cardio?

The real question is what is an aggressive cut here?

I mean, you probably shouldn't be doing massively aggressive cuts if you can avoid them because that's where lean muscle loss can come into play.

Should you keep your step goal and cardio the same?

It it?

Step goal for the most part will roughly stay the same whether you're cutting or building.

It only varies up if for some reason you're so low on calories and your body is not reacting and then you you have to counterbalance that with some movement.

Cardio is typically roughly the same.

I mean, cardio sessions that you're going to be doing, whether you're cutting or you're building are roughly 2 to 3 per week and then and then incorporating those in.

So, you know, when people talk about, well, how does this vary between the two?

Cardio itself isn't done to lose weight or to build muscle to begin with.

You do cardio for the cardiovascular health benefits in the cardio cardio adaptations, the benefits of the performance of cardiovascular health.

And so the, the that doesn't really change.

The only time that you might change that is maybe if you're deep into a cut and the cardio volume that you were doing before is something that you cannot recover from, then you lower that, but then you go back to that once you are more fueled step goal.

I don't change those for people unless there's a distinct reason to change those.

And a distinct reason, like I said, is maybe they are having some issues with losing somebody fat and they've got room to move up in a not ridiculous manner.

And if you've listened to us talk before, we'll set base step goals anywhere between like 6 and 8000, depending on the person.

And we'll say, just get this and then we'll see how things go.

And if I've got a person that I'm working with and we've been losing body fat for a while and they're relatively lower on calories and I'm like, man, if I go lower on calories than this, we're going to be dipping into the issues with micronutrient deficiencies.

I'll say, hey, why don't we up that step count?

And so that could be a reason to vary step counts between the two.

But otherwise, you stay roughly similar.

I don't know if you massively vary them between clients, do you?

I do not.

And you really you think?

Yeah, the only thing that I can really think of is like, and this would be very niche scenario of like a bodybuilder prepping for a show where you increase the number of days of cardio the closer you're getting to a show because it's it helps the calories out part of the equation, right.

So if you're somebody, maybe that you.

Also have nowhere to go lower the calories in.

Right.

So you know, this question sort of actually almost, it sounds like it came from somebody who might be a bodybuilder because they're talking about super low, like an extreme cut.

This could be somebody who's prepped for a show or prepped for a photo shoot or something and sort of followed a competition prep like process, in which case you would decrease the cardio because nobody needs like you don't need to be doing 7 days of frigging cardio.

And a lot of these bodybuilders when they approach a show, they're doing 567 days of cardio a week and you don't need that many.

So in that instance, I would drop that person down to two to three days a week, but that's the only instance I can think of where I would change anything based on strict deficit to maintenance.

Yeah, it's kind of like those fringe cases more than anything.

So like when there when there's this question that there was a reason that I was kind of pausing because like there's a couple times where you might right, but.

Not many people are going to be in that situation.

Yeah, yeah.

And so the general answer is no, you don't.

Yeah.

But, you know, like everything else in health and fitness, it's it depends.

Next question, how important is meal timing?

So meal timing has always been sort of a buzz type of thing.

And there have been recommendations for meal timing for a variety of different benefits.

The most common 1 is that you need to do things like have meals every two hours to stoke the metabolic flame.

You know, eating smaller, more meals is is able to Rev up your metabolism.

You know, you eat, you need to eat a certain amount of times per day for lean muscle.

And it it always seems to be centered around like two or three hours or so.

Meal timing does have effects.

The thing is, the question is in what area are we looking to have these effects?

If we're talking about fat loss, it does not have our weight loss, it does not have an effect.

Number of meals per day has no bearing on metabolism.

So there's a bunch of studies that have looked at this and there's only been one that has actually shown a difference, and that one has some wonky data in it.

It's EAO.

It's IAO and I can't remember the year, but it was EAO ET all and and that's the one that stands out.

So if people are looking into this and they're like, well, Alan said that it doesn't matter, but I found a study where it does matter.

We do acknowledge that there is one that is a little bit funky, but there are dozens that don't show anything and they're, they all seem to agree.

So when you've got one that doesn't really look right and then every other one agrees that it, yeah, it's an outlier study.

So once we remove that study from the data sets, there is no indication that number of meals makes a difference as far as metabolism goes.

And I think that it's been, I mean, you know, there are there's people that will say, well, you have to eat so often to stoke the metabolic fire.

And there's just as many people that will say fast.

And that's the complete opposite.

And yet both groups seem to lose weight when you equate calories and protein.

And so this really gives us some insight into the fact that it really doesn't seem to matter.

Now, there are other reasons that meal timing could make some sense.

We can only absorb so many nutrients at one time, both macro and micro.

And there is a potential benefit to having a net nitrogen balance from proteins in our body for a longer majority of the day.

If you try to eat all of your protein in one meal in an entire day, there's probably going to be a significant portion of the day where you don't have a net positive nitrogen balance, which can be used to build lean muscle, repair tissue.

All these different types of things that we're looking for, particularly when building lean muscle is a focus.

And so meal timing does seem to have an effect.

It seems to be one of the least important things that we can manipulate.

And so just like the cardio situations that we were talking about before, if you are having problems, if you're tracking food and you're having problems hitting your macros on the daily, don't even listen to this.

It makes no difference.

Focus on hitting your totals.

Hitting your totals is much more important than anything else that I'm going to say here.

If you don't have any problem hitting your totals, then meal timing may make some sense under certain situations.

If you're in a calorie deficit and the goal is fat loss, it looks like 2 to 3 meals per day spread out roughly evenly works well.

I mean, and that's just, that's a typical eating pattern.

That's a breakfast, lunch, dinner.

And so that should not really throw anybody off when we're in a calorie surplus and we're trying to build lean muscle.

There is enough associative data to say, hey, we seem, we seem to see better results with three to four meals daily than two.

And maybe it has to do with the fact that you've got a lot more food in your system, you're trying to absorb a lot more nutrients.

But we do seem to see benefits to doing that.

So protein utilization and being able to absorb micronutrients might have some benefits from timing, but it's not ridiculous.

Like it doesn't require you to have this very neurotic heating pattern, a typical eating pattern, even if you're trying to lose weight and you only have two meals per day, seems to work just as well as most others.

Unless you're a very large muscular man, then you might want to do 3.

So there's a, there's a difference depending on what we're talking about here and when we're talking about it.

And when you're doing that.

Part of the benefits to spreading these meals out is the fact that you can have that net positive nitrogen balance, which requires a certain amount of protein at each one of those meals.

If you're spreading them out evenly.

Because the anabolic response, the heightened anabolic machinery to a high protein meal, which means for most people, 25 grams give or take at one time seems to last about 5 to 6 hours.

And so if we spread this out, you know, every five hours, breakfast, lunch, dinner, which is roughly where they fall into anyways, you know, if you have lunch at noon, you might be having dinner at 6:00 or 7:00 PM There, you know, there we go.

We just, we've spread out the, the protein intake, we've covered most of that time period with being in an anabolic stimulus that spreading it out allows you to more efficiently absorb and utilize protein.

And this is for more than just muscle protein synthesis, but we've got distinct data showing us this is how long MPs is elevated, and therefore we can take advantage of that.

So we do see some benefits to spreading these things out in that manner.

Do most people need to micromanage this and worry about this?

No, the good news about this conversation is that you don't have to be eating every two to three hours unless that's literally how you enjoy eating.

And there are some people that are grazers.

So, you know, this is one of those things that you have to take your situation in context.

And if you are able to get in your totals throughout the day, this is not something that you should be.

If you're not able to get in your totals throughout the day, this is not something that you should be focusing on.

Figure out.

However, you can get those totals in in the best possible way and then go from there.

If everything else is on autopilot and things are feeling really good, you can start to look into this and say, OK, well, what did Alan say about this?

How can I adjust my meals?

Oh, I don't need to because I eat breakfast, lunch and dinner.

OK, cool.

And that's perfectly fine.

So if you're getting 25 grams of protein at each meal roughly, unless you're a smaller woman, you can probably go down a little bit towards 20.

You're probably doing what you need to do.

Now, many people will look at that and they'll say, well, if I'm only doing 3 meals, I'm doing 25 grams of protein.

That's only 75 grams of protein.

True, you don't have to stick to 25 grams.

You can go above that to maximize muscle protein synthesis.

It'll just take longer to absorb.

But if after those three meals you've got some excess protein that you want to eat or you didn't add it to those three meals, you can just eat it however you want.

You know, in a snack throughout the day, have a protein shake, have that non fat Greek yogurt, have that jerky or whatever it is and get in your totals that way.

It's the fact that you have this protein intake spread that really seems to help and that's potentially why we don't see the same maximal benefit to lean muscle gain in things like intermittent fasting because it's very difficult to spread out that over the extended time of an entire day.

Now we see the same benefits to intermittent fasting, like if you do like a 16 off 8 hours of an eating window fast, the 16-8 intermittent fast, we see the same results in a cut.

But remember in a cut, you only need to have two of those meals.

So essentially that intermittent fast falls within that window anyways.

So we see these maximized benefits by typically just eating in a normal eating pattern.

And you only start to see these problems if you're doing something that's a bit odd, like if you're doing a OMAD one meal a day.

When you start doing one meal a day, that can work great for weight loss, but you don't necessarily have the same body composition when you lose that weight.

You might lose a little bit more lean muscle because you're only having one protein feeding in a day.

And it is very difficult for people doing OMAD to get in their daily protein needs.

I mean, think about trying to eat 150 grams.

50 grams in one sitting.

In one sitting.

That's that's fucking impossible.

Like it's and everybody is like, Oh yeah, no, I can do that.

Well, yeah, because you just had two shakes and then chicken breast and things like that.

But that's still uncomfortable and, and not a wonderful thing to do all the time.

So, you know, there is some nuance there, You know, and when we used to have that whole idea, the anabolic window idea where you had to have that protein, you know, within 30 minutes of working out.

And sure, this this idea of staying anabolic a larger part of the day will probably cover that window anyways, because you're going to eat within a multiple hours before to to either bring you through that entire period or you're going to eat and within a couple hours afterwards, which will fuel that.

And so the idea of having to do it specifically because of the workout isn't necessarily true, but doing what we were just talking about will essentially cover that since you're covering the majority of the day anyways, which is why that anabolic window doesn't really seem to pan out when we tested in free living people, it just doesn't seem to make a difference.

And that's great.

It allows you to make the choice based off of your personal preference.

Next question, how important is the mind muscle connection?

This is something that you're going to be hearing a lot about.

I would, I'm, I'm interested to get Beth's experience on, on testing this kind of thing out because I'm sure that she has, because this has been a big topic of conversation in the physique and bodybuilding world for decades.

The idea of the mind muscle connection is that there are two ways that we can potentially lift weights.

We could focus on moving the load, which means you move the weight as efficiently as possible, or you could focus on contracting the muscle.

The mind muscle connection is literally just another way to say, hey, I'm going to focus on contracting the muscle itself.

Doesn't matter what the load is.

We're just trying to maximize that flexion of that muscle, make that muscle work.

There was a theory for many decades that if you focused on an internal locus of control, which is the mind muscle connection, which is making that muscle move, not worrying about the weight itself, that would be a better result for hypertrophy.

Conversely, the idea of moving the load, if you are a performance athlete, a power athlete, a strength athlete, focusing on moving the load itself, no matter how your body had to do it, as long as you're staying within the standards of your sport, was the smartest thing to do.

Because who cares if your muscles contracting as long as that weight's moving.

That's an out an external locus of control.

When we look at the research, it's kind of funny because it almost met in the middle.

When we look at studies that are working at 80% of your one Rep Max or lighter mind muscle connection seems to matter.

Probably because the weight's just not heavy enough to really force you to maximally contract that muscle.

When we look at loads that are greater than 80% of your one Rep Max and the closer that you get to failure, and now this isn't saying you have to do like a one Rep Max, This is essentially saying that when you go close to failure.

So in the past, what we've talked about those reps and reserve models, the 1-2 or right at failure, one Rep away from failure, 2 reps away from failure, right at failure.

That high intensity causes the muscle to contract maximally anyway.

So if you're working with the proper intensity, as we always discuss, the mind muscle connection doesn't seem to make a difference, particularly in compound movements.

It seems to make zero difference.

There might be a little bit of a minute difference in isolation movements, but it's probably just noise in the studies from the fact that these people didn't really know what failure felt like.

And so that little bit of noise that we get because people can really push the failure on compound movements typically more than they do on on isolation movements.

And Beth can say if this falls within her anecdote and experience, but I find that isolation movements.

When I'm doing intensity checks with my clients seem to be off more than compound movements.

They do.

They definitely do.

And I think it's because people can feel failure better on compound movements than they can on isolation movements.

I think that this discomfort just builds with isolation and then they just pull the RIP cord and and come out early.

But my go ahead.

It's, it's almost like a, because usually what I hear from clients in that regard, like if I, if I have somebody doing an intensity check and I pick a biceps movement or a triceps movement, people always talk about like the burn and they think that that burning sensation in the muscle means that they're close to failure.

Which is not lactic acid.

Yeah.

But I think that's where like that, that actual like physical sensation that they're feeling, they think that that is their muscle approaching the failure point and they'll cut themselves off.

Because to, to your point, like most of my people, when I do select an isolation movement like biceps or triceps or something like that, they fail.

They they get like 12 reps in reserve.

They're more likely to fail.

Yeah, they're, they're much, they're much more likely to fail.

I always find that too, you know, and I, and I see that often because I try, when I'm taking people to failure, I try to do less compound movements and I try to do less compound movements when I'm doing this specifically with people because it, it tends to be safer.

You know, people are not always willing to ask for spots when you should be asking for spots.

And it can be sometimes uncomfortable to ask a stranger for a spot and then tell them I'm going to fail and then like see the look on their face.

Something like bench press, where like, people notoriously pull the bar off and pull it off early, yeah.

So when I test with most people, I would have them do a lot of of isolation lifts.

And I've always noticed that when I have them do those isolation lift tests, it's much more likely to be off by significant amounts than it is compounds.

And I think that it goes back to this whole sensing where you are as, as in proximity to failure.

And certainly there's probably more burn in isolation movements like you talked about.

And that probably makes people a little bit hesitant.

They think that they're closer when they really aren't.

And so my muscle connection is this something that you really need to be focusing, focusing on?

My answer is no.

And, and having said that, you will certainly find if you look through the research on this, because I've, I've done Instagram breakdowns of like all the research that's out there on this.

And I found studies that suggest, hey, my muscle connection works.

But when we understand it in the context of, OK, well, why does this potentially work?

And where does it not really work?

And if we're working in proximity to failure, which has already been shown to really be the right way to build lean muscle, why wouldn't we be working there anyways?

And then if this loses its importance as we go there, it's almost one of those things that like, it does have importance, but it's it, it becomes not important when you're doing the other things, right?

So yes, you will be able to talk with coaches and some coaches will say, well, there's data showing it works.

There is, it's just a little bit unnuanced, I think.

And and so, you know, take for that what you will, you guys can use the information at least hopefully we're giving it to you in an objective manner so you can understand why we recommend what we do, what the data shows, and then you can make that right choice for you.

All right.

Does being hungry mean you're in a calorie deficit?

The answer is no.

Hunger is an individual experience.

As we've talked about in the past.

It is based a lot on the food choices that you're making, the timing, your individual hunger cues.

You know, some people experience a lot more hunger than other people.

Many people, I mean, I've worked with, I have one guy that I can think of that I've worked with that even in a bulk, he was hungry and he was eating the right foods.

He was eating, You know, we always talk about, OK, well, if you're hungry, well, you need to be eating more vegetables.

You need to be going to lower calorie proteins, leaner cuts of protein, leaner carbs, leaner, you know, whatever to be able to increase the volume, higher fiber.

He was doing that and he was still really hungry.

And this is one of those things, just like pain, hunger is a very subjective experience.

It is more problematic, It is more of a challenge in people that have had obesity in the past or are currently obese.

It's probably one of the reasons for obesity.

Was discord and hunger cues Yeah.

Discord and hunger cues and so you know it's you're we've talked about in the past too where like if you lose weight you have these discordant hunger cues and so somebody that's £200 and gets that to 150 lbs is going to experience significantly more hunger than someone that's always been 150 lbs.

And so if you're a person that has lost weight in the past and you're trying to lose more body fat and you're or you're trying to maintain you're going to be experiencing more hunger than somebody else.

So hunger itself is not an indicator of a calorie deficit or not.

Now that can be confusing because we will tell people, hey, you know, they, they first start working with us and they're like, I want to lose fat.

And we're like, hey, you know, you can expect hunger in a calorie deficit.

It's not an emergency.

Yes, you can expect hunger in a calorie deficit.

That's the right expectation.

That doesn't mean that you're going to.

Well, it doesn't mean that all hunger means you're in a deficit either.

Right, They're not, they're not an exact determinant, just like sweating doesn't mean you're burning a lot of calories.

They're, they're different processes that are loosely related, let's put it that way.

And so this is not a good sign that you're in a calorie deficit.

I mean, the sign that you're in a calorie deficit is you're watching your weight and your measurements over multiple weeks and you start to lose size.

That's a sign you're in a calorie deficit.

You know, and this is assuming that we're taking into account things like water weight flux that we always talk about.

But like, you know, you look at like 4 week week increments and you probably have a good indication of whether or not you're in a calorie deficit.

If you look at one week increments, you probably have no idea what you're looking at.

Even if you go down in weight doesn't mean you're in a calorie deficit for sure.

Might be flux.

And that's it's, it's sad to say that, but that's just the way that it is.

And, you know, you learn to look at these things as a whole rather than each individual part.

And then you make some adjustments based on that.

If you feel like your strength in physique has gone downhill, can you get it back?

The answer is yes, you can.

I mean, this is one of those things that they talk about called muscle memory.

And it's been shown pretty much ad nauseam in the research that regaining lost strength and lost lean muscle is faster than getting it in the first place.

And there's a big debate these days going on about like how long it takes to lose strength and to lose lean muscle.

And the best that I can say is it looks like a little bit over a week.

You start to lose strength about 3 or 4 weeks before you lose lean muscle.

There are claims based off of like muscle biopsies that you could lose it in like a couple days.

And that seems absolutely ridiculous to me because if you would lose muscle in a couple days, we would never have made it out of caves in the Stone Age.

We literally would have just died off.

Like, we would have no ability to fend off changes in reality, you know?

So three to four weeks seems to be based on the majority of research, what's really good.

Now, the reason that we can't look at distinct muscle biopsies is because what's happening in like a very small bit of cells doesn't necessarily show what's going on in the entire muscle.

And so it might be so minute of a change that it really makes no difference.

And so extrapolating that to be like, oh, well, you know, we've got all this massive muscle loss.

And the other ones that I see are people that are like literally strapped into bed and traction, traction cases and in hospitals.

And if you have no physical movement whatsoever, I can see you losing muscle shorter than three to four weeks.

Yeah, for.

Sure.

Particularly when I would highly doubt that in most cases in hospital situations, these people are getting, you know, the right amounts of protein for optimal lean muscle.

They're probably not eating as much.

I mean, they're probably on intubation tubes.

Like there's a whole lot of problems that come into play here with the strength dropping after a little over a week, if not a week.

The strength that is lost there is not due to losses of lean muscle.

It's a neurological change and neurological changes take about half the amount of time if they, if they're lost in a week, take about half of a week to come back.

So it comes back in about half the time until you get the baseline.

And then it's, it's much faster beyond that.

But these these neurological changes are things like motor unit recruitment in the muscle rate coding for your nervous system and, and the muscle firing, all these different things that send signals from your brain to the muscle to actually function and fire.

Become more adept at doing it when you're in practice for resistance training goes away quickly, It comes back quickly.

So this is not something to really worry about.

It's something to expect.

And like if you go on a two week vacation, you're probably not going to come back stronger.

That's just the way that it is.

But you'll probably recover in about a week.

So it's not really something to really worry about.

So go back in, drop the load that you would do on your workouts by like 20% and just get back into the swing of things and start going back physique if that takes three to four weeks.

Now here's the thing, three to four weeks seems to be a good answer if you are relatively young to middle age.

It seems to be sooner the older you are.

So it could be about two weeks and 65 plus or 70 plus year olds.

So that's something to keep in mind.

It can happen.

And so when you're going on these extended vacations, as you know, 75 year olds are lucky enough to do because you're no longer in the workforce and you've got expendable income to go on extended vacations, maybe it makes sense for you to be staying active when you're on vacation.

And Beth and I talk about that a lot.

You're going to minimize the effect that this has.

Make sure you keep your protein high, bring a protein powder with you.

That's how you will prevent this from happening as much as possible and allow you to get back into play.

Now the reason that you can regain muscle so quickly in comparison to building it up for the first time is because as you build muscle, the skeletal muscle tissue lays down things called myonuclei.

Myonuclei, even when the muscle atrophies, do not go away.

They essentially act as factories that kick on this anabolic stimulus and build that muscle back up.

And actually this is really cool.

This is one of the reasons that people that have been on steroids in the past are always at an advantage to people that have never been on steroids because they build more and more and more myonuclei beyond what is natural and they have the ability to maintain and build more muscle than a natural athlete.

Even if they ran steroids 10 years ago, potentially if they build up enough muscle during that period, they will have the ability to outpace a natural athlete for the rest of their lives.

And so I I find that at some point, just like GLP one medicines are becoming a really big thing for weight loss.

I feel like as more and more and more anabolic medications come into play, this might be something that gets, you know, you turn 45 and all of a sudden they're going to be like, you need to go on these anabolics.

The issue that we have, I mean the issue that we have with the current ones is that there are side effects and there's really big abuse potential.

For sure.

And so once they, that's exactly what Sarms are, the selective androgen receptor receptor modulators.

This is a class of drugs that they are trying to get to work to build muscle with no side effects.

It's not there.

Sarms have a lot of side effects.

But that's the entire idea behind sarms.

And that was the selling point to like all the TikTok kids that are getting out there and even the women.

A lot of women are getting on Sarms.

The CrossFit community loved SARMS.

They loved them because they originally, well, they did originally because you couldn't test for them.

So originally all the Crossfitters, like literally every single Crossfitter that I knew in the North Carolina area was like Downing Sarms, like it was water because you couldn't test for them.

And they were like they were, they were getting insanely strong on these things.

But then they had somebody had like the yellowing vision, like there are there are some kind of gnarly side effects, these things one one person had some Ed going on like.

Well, so that would that's kind of the idea behind them is like they don't they're not supposed to cause the like.

To give you.

Androgen receptor shut down.

They're not supposed to cause the testes to shut down.

They're not supposed to cause virilization in women.

They're not supposed to cause all those problems.

But they do.

Yeah.

And so they're it's a class of drug that they're trying to make work, but it just, it doesn't at this point.

But because of the fact that that going on anabolics really increased myonuclei, it would be in a perfect world where they didn't have the side effects that they do.

It would be the ants.

One of the big answers for sarcopenia for prevention of age-related muscle loss that causes immobility and infirmity and old age.

This would be one of the right ways to treat it.

But it's got a whole host of, you know, issues with blood lipids and sexual hormones.

And they haven't really found a way for it to just target skeletal muscle tissue because you don't want it targeting smooth muscle and cardiac tissue because then you get hypermegaly of the heart.

And then people have heart attacks.

And, you know, people always make fun of like bodybuilders and they're like, why are they all dying at age 40?

And it's because of partially because of this, partially because of the cutting protocols and the drugs that they use in cutting, but the, the the hypermegaly of the heart is a real problem and the effects of the cardiovascular system because it wreaks havoc on veins and arteries.

And so all these things kind of kind of affect that.

So, yeah, I mean, this is a good question, but it it we kind of, we kind of went off on a little tangent there.

But This is why some of these things work.

And This is why these are areas of study and areas of research and, and hopefully at some point in life, we come up with a good answer to some of these things to be able to fight off things like sarcopenia, you know, and, and they've even looked at this and as potentially one of those things to put in play in menopause.

You know, not that it appears that menopause really causes this directly causes loss of lean muscle, but at least associatively, we do see a drop in lean muscle during this time period because when you stop eating well, when you stop exercising, when you.

Stop sleeping when you stop.

Sleeping, you know, you're, you're going to lose lean muscle And, and you know, I, I remember studies that looked at the nutrition changes in women and menopause and one of the big changes was like a 35 or 40% drop in daily protein intake.

And this is in a population of women that weren't eating protein to begin with.

And then you drop that by 40% because like you asked the general woman, the people that are listening to this should not ever feel offended by these comments because the people that are listening to this are eating protein.

But if you look at your friends, you know, those like wine moms at your, you know, Sunday school or whatever it is, they're not.

Eating They're getting 50 grams of protein a day if they're lucky.

Yeah.

And then drop that by 40%.

Yeah, like it's like it's bad.

And so we've, we've got a, we've got a lot of people that could benefit from these things, but the real answer at this stage is just get your ass back into the gym, eat some food that is good for you and, and make it happen.

OK one more, if counting calories causes you to binge or gives you a bad relationship with food, should you continue?

This is it's a great question.

I feel like the the answer is a little bit self-explanatory.

I mean if it's causing you to have what is essentially disordered eating, no you should not be doing it.

I would recommend habits instead, because if you're trying to better your life, you can certainly improve your habits.

Make sure that you have at least a serving of vegetables at every meal, if not half the plate.

Make sure that you are choosing lean, minimally processed sources of protein.

Make sure that you are having multiple servings of fruit per day.

Make sure that you are moderating your fats and starchy carbs.

And I think that if you start there and drink some water, you're probably going to be doing yourself a lot of good and potentially even repairing your relationship with food.

Because the studies that I've seen that I've looked at that macro tracking and numbers, when you have people that do not have disordered eating, it does not 'cause disordered eating, But in people with disordered eating tendencies, it can absolutely exacerbate them among, you know, a host of other things that could potentially cause issues like that.

So I would be conscious of where you are and just honest with yourself and say, hey, look, if I have these disordered eating tendencies, improving my relationship with food is the number one thing.

Maybe you put fat loss on the back burner.

And that's not to say that you won't find fat loss when you do these habit changes, but it takes that pressure off of you from seeing the scale drop every week or every two weeks and allows you to focus on improving this relationship with food.

And the thing that I would really stress here is no matter what your goal is, if disordered eating is in play, you have to improve that relationship with Food First before you can really achieve that goal.

Yep.

And so that's where I would go from there.

I mean that that was the point that I was going to make is there are there are honestly probably some people that should not ever be in the calorie deficit.

Like IF and if you were the type of person that every time you go into a deficit, you start to feel that hunger.

You start to micromanage your intake.

And it is an immediate trigger for either really negative emotions or binge eating or any other type of of disordered eating tendency.

You have to really stop and ask yourself the question, is this worth it?

Because for some people the answer should to that should be no.

And these are typically people who they're lifetime dieters, right?

So they've, they've, they started this when, you know, they were popping diet pills when they were teenagers, you know, so that these are people that have been doing this for a very, very long time.

They have a very not healthy relationship with their bodies, with the food that they eat, with the scale, with just body dysmorphia in general.

You, you really need to ask yourself the question, should you really ever be in a deficit?

Now, obviously if you are unhealthy from a, you know, from a, from a health standpoint, because you're, you have high body fat content, then then you need to, you need to be working with professionals at that point.

You need a behavioral therapist, you need an Rd., you need people who this, this is their job to help people with disordered eating like that.

You would not come to somebody like me or Alan if you were in this type of scenario and we would immediately refer you out.

But yeah, you and I do think that Alan's point of like managing your expectations as well.

If you if, if this is causing some binge eating behavior in you, then 100% agree that you need to pull back to more of a habits based approach.

But then you, you really do have to be realistic about the types of results that you're going to have.

Because truly, if you're talking about body fat loss, what gets measured gets managed.

You cannot control what is coming off unless you are controlling what is going in.

That is not to say that somebody who follows habits can't lose weight.

I've had multiple clients do the habits guide version that of of fat loss that Alan and I do here.

And I've had quite a few lose 1015, some even 20 lbs.

But that's again, these were conversations that I was having with these people, managing their expectations through this process.

And they all did get to a point where we were not going to be losing any more body fat.

And I told them at that time, you have a choice here.

You can either start to weigh and measure your food and track your intake, or we can, we can stop and you can just kind of coast with the habits that you have built.

And that is the choice then that the person will make.

I also want people to think about it this way.

If you have these disordered eating tendencies, if this really gives you these issues and we say the first thing that you need to do is improve your relationship with food and work on habits.

And your first reaction is, well, that doesn't sound good to me because that I'm not progressing.

That's 100% not true because to progress, like the first step in progressing is this.

And so this is a huge sign of progress.

People don't value the improvements to mental and emotional health and their improvements with relationship with food as much as they do drops on the scale.

And often times people don't even view them as improvements, even though they're the most important improvements you can make.

You need to realize that there are non scale victories.

How are you feeling?

How's your relationship with food?

How's your relationship with your body?

How is your relationship with you?

Know your habits on the daily?

These are the types of things that will cause that scale to move in the direction that you wanted to move into.

But you have to master them first.

You're trying to build a house without laying a foundation.

And all you keep doing is erecting a house and it keeps falling down and you're like, I don't understand what's what's not working.

And we're telling you lay the foundation first, then you can build the house.

But it's something you need to do.

Yep, you got to earn the right to do that.

You know, and, and you got to earn the right for yourself.

I mean, you're not trying to impress a coach or a significant other or anybody else.

You need to do it for yourself because that is what will give you that mental and emotional fortitude to be able to go forward with everything else.

All right guys, that is it.

We are wrapping up this episode of Noble Just Bacon.

Thank you for reaching out.

Make sure to send your questions to our Facebook group, Mighty Networks, YouTube, Instagram, anywhere you can find us online.

We will see you next week.