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If you are loving what you're learning in the podcast and you want to start applying it to your fitness routine, you can try one of our free classes. No credit card required. Just drop your email to get access. This is a Upper Body Build class taught by myself. To take the class, visit portal.evlofitness.com.
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I'm Dr. Shannon Richie. I'm a doctor of physical therapy, fitness trainer, and founder of Evil Fitness. In the Dr. Shannon show, you'll learn applicable tools to improve your health based on science. Welcome to the show. Hi everyone. Welcome back. The holidays are approaching and they're often a time of the year where we fall off our healthy habits. If you're like me, maybe you find yourself drinking a little bit more when you're around family and friends. I'm not always as consistent with exercise and I'm also eating out a lot more, indulging more in general. And I don't necessarily think that it's realistic to expect everyone to stay a hundred percent consistent with their food and training over the holidays. In my past, having that expectation gave me kind of an all or nothing mentality in which I didn't end up exercising at all and I kind of fueled in ways that just did not make me feel good. So I want to create a podcast in which this information can help you achieve a mindset of maintenance and gentle consistency over the holidays. So you ultimately feel really good and you don't feel like you completely fall off, but you also don't feel like you have to be perfectly adhering to your routine when in reality we're all going through a little higher stress right now, maybe travel, maybe in different locations. So expecting gentle consistency and maintenance is great during this time. So if you're like me, you might be eating in a little bit of an overall calorie surplus over the holidays. And eating in a calorie surplus is not always bad for reaching your goals. In fact, building muscle while in a surplus is slightly easier and you may feel really strong with lots of fuel. So it's a good time to take advantage of strength training and building muscle. So with strength training, what should we prioritize? Prioritize strength training close to failure. I think the inclination is to do more cardio to try to like burn off food or burn fat. And I do like to encourage staying overall active. But calories from activity tend to plateau around 800 calories per day. So if you have the intention of burning burning off what you ate over Thanksgiving, it likely won't happen from one workout. The next day no matter how hard you work. So the reason I recommend strength training is because of resistance Training's close to failures effect on glucose regulation and muscle maintenance. When you train close to failure glycogen stores in your muscle empty. This means there is increased available storage for glycogen the next time you eat a carb rich meal. I never want you to view any form of exercise as erasing a meal because that's just not scientifically valid or healthy to our relationship with food. But strength training can help offset fat gain because of muscles ability to store glucose. So it's just a tool that you can use during this time. Your regular evolo schedule will help you build muscle throughout the holidays. It's the appropriate volume if you're on the three, four or five time a week track for you to build muscle over the holidays. But if you're like I can't commit to my regular workouts during the holidays, you might be in more of a maintenance mindset rather than a muscle building mindset. So how do we maintain what is the dosage of exercise needed to maintain? To maintain muscle mass you need to train close to failure anywhere from one to three hard sets per muscle group per week. And training near failure is important. The physiological stress of near failure can help maintain muscle mass even if training frequency decreases. This can be done in several ways. If you're an evil member, my recommendation is to try to stay on your regular track if you can. However, if you realistically just won't adhere to that, I likely won't. Then just shoot for doing upper body build, lower body build and mat build. Spread over three days throughout the week. So those are 3:35 minutes spread over three days. That way you'll get at least three hard sets for each muscle group for that week. This is the most sure way to maintain the amount of muscle that you have while getting the benefits that training your muscles close to failure has on glucose regulation. If you don't have 35 minutes for your workout, you could do the warmup in the first set of those three classes. Upper, lower and mat build spread over three days. So that will equate to about a 10 to 15 minute workout and allow you to get one hard set per muscle group for that week. A third option is if you have limited access to equipment. Maybe you're traveling is that you can take our travel classes. We just released a new track with a pillow and a band only. Those are the only pieces of equipment that we use. If you click on the Today tab, click the Pencil icon, scroll down and navigate to where it says the travel track. And this will change your homepage to five 20 minute travel classes that you can take in sequence. So do what you can to stay consistent even if it's lower volume. Shoot for one to three sets per muscle group per week, three being preferable, one being kind of the minimum that you need for maintenance. Don't expect perfection. I know I won't stay perfectly consistent during this time either. But keep training close to failure even if your volume is lower, because if you aren't training close to failure, you'll start to lose some muscle tissue over time. Studies aren't sure how long this is. It could be 10 days, it could be even up to two weeks. But you will start to lose muscle tissue if you're not loading your muscles consistently. If you're spending, you know, over the holidays, let's say like a month or longer, not strength training and losing muscle, you may feel like you have a steeper hill to climb after the holidays wrap up and you're back to your usual routine. So shoot for at least one, preferably three hard sets per muscle group per week to maintain muscle mass. So just to wrap up. I've found that expecting perfection during the holidays tends to backfire. I just kind of eat normally and expect some indulgences. I try to maintain my muscle mass by strength training close to failure. Again, shooting for at least one hard set per muscle group per week, more like three is probably more ideal. I notice that I often feel stronger when I'm in a little bit of a calorie surplus, which is a fun bonus. I also just try to stay overall active with lots of family walks or taking our steady state classes on the EVLO membership. Okay, I hope this helps. I hope this is encouragement to help you stay consistent, not worrying about perfection. Gentle consistency is truly the secret sauce during the holidays. Good luck and we'll see you next time.