Research Roundup: Smart Phones Make You Weaker, Creatine Boosts Your Brain, Cardio Doesn’t Kill Gains, and More

Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews

I’m going to give you the TLDR for the latest studies on topics like cardio’s effects on muscle and strength gain, body recomposition, pre-workout meals, how creatine affects cognition, and how browsing social media can make you weaker.

This podcast is another installment in my Research Roundup series of episodes, where I give you concise and practical takeaways from studies that I think are interesting and that can help us gain muscle and strength faster, lose fat faster, perform better athletically, feel better, live longer, or get and stay healthier.

There is a ton of scientific research that gets published every year, and even if you narrow your focus to fitness research, it would still take several lifetimes to unravel the hairball of studies on nutrition, training, supplementation, and related fields.

That's why my team and I put a lot of time into reviewing, dissecting, and describing scientific studies in articles, podcasts, and books.

In today's episode, I'm tackling studies on whether glute “activation” exercises boost glute growth, how effective the 5:2 diet is for preserving muscle while you diet, whether vitamin D can actually help prevent injury, and how well blood flow restriction training works for building muscle. Press play if you want to learn the answers to those questions.

Oh and if you like this type of episode, let me know. Send me an email ([e-mail]) or direct message me on Instagram (@muscleforlifefitness). And if you don’t like it, let me know that too or how you think it could be better.

Timestamps:

0:00 - My award-winning fitness books for men and women: https://legionathletics.com/products/books/

4:01 - Does cardio kill muscle gain and strength?

9:22 - How can I gain muscle and lose a lot of fat at the same time?

17:08 - Are pre-wokout meals helpful for strength training?

22:49 - Does creatine make you smarter?

25:59 - Does scrolling through social media while training make you weaker?

Mentioned on the Show:

My award-winning fitness books for men and women: https://legionathletics.com/products/books/