How to Maintain Your Muscle Mass and Bone Density with Minimal Effort

This study looked at how little one can exercise. It was a randomized control trial in this case on young women looking at muscle strength and aerobic fitness gains to see how much could you maintain with a reduced training frequency. So what they did was they took participants for 12 weeks, they assigned them into different groups. One group trained once a week, one group trained once every two weeks, and one group did nothing. And this was for 12 weeks. We had a group training once a week, group trained once every two weeks, and a group doing nothing. And they did a whole bunch of measurements, you know, leg press one rep max and body composition, counter movement, jump, quadriceps, cross sectional area of the muscle, just how large the quadriceps were, or the amount of muscle hypertrophy that occurred, maximum aerobic power, et cetera. The study concluded that you can perform one training session every two weeks for three months and preserve 90 to 95% of the muscle mass, strength and aerobic power adaptations that you have achieved with a style of training called concurrent training. Meaning they were doing the aerobics and the cardio in the same session once every two weeks. Now, I'm not telling you this as an excuse for you to stay sedentary, but, but let's face it, some of us travel, we get busy, we get guilty that we're not able to train, we think, oh, I'm going to lose my muscle, I'm going to lose my aerobic fitness. You lose a lot less than what you'd think, surprisingly less than what you'd think. So this idea of reduced training frequency is super interesting. Now of course it is important, and you no doubt realize this because you're probably a fitness devotee if you're listening in or maybe you're interested in being one. Training once every two weeks is not that great for mood. I mean, for me I'm just happier, clappier, in a better mood if I can get some kind of training session in every day, right? So a lot of this is not applicable to say, mental health or productivity or creativity. Back to the Salvatore ambulando concept. But minimum training is definitely something you should know about. For example, for cardiovascular fitness, studies have shown that as little as 150 minutes of moderate intensity exercise per week or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise per week is more than adequate to maintain cardiovascular health. As a matter of fact, if you exceed that, sometimes you get diminishing returns and you can get atherosclerosis or stiffening of the arteries or cardiovascular complications with excess training. So 150 minutes of moderate intensity per week, or 75 minutes of vigorous intensity per week can easily allow you to maintain cardiovascular fitness. Now, leading up to this study, most studies showed that for maintaining muscle mass and strength, one resistance training session per week was sufficient. And this is especially in people who are already trained going into a period of detraining. Most of these studies get cut off after about three months. If you trained once a week or once every two weeks for a year, I suspect you'd probably lose more fitness than what we see in three months. But at least over a three month period of time, once every one to two weeks appears more than sufficient. And most of the studies show that a combination like this latest study showed of aerobic and strength training at the same time is the best way to go, right? So what I mean by that is you might do.

Let'S say, three sets of 12 repetitions of the deadlift, the squat, the overhead press, the row, the chest press and the pull down, and you might do some stretching and core work and your recovery, unquote periods between each of those sets and then in between each of the exercises, maybe you'll ride on the bike hard for two minutes. That's a very typical routine I might do at a hotel gym, for example. That's concurrent aerobic and strength training done in the same session. And it's also very time efficient. In addition, most studies show that if you are training infrequently, intensity counts a lot of right going to failure with each shutter. Following what I call the rule of three. If your goal is 12 reps and you can do 15 reps, then you used too light of a weight. And if Your goal is 12 reps and you can only get to 9 reps, you probably use too heavy of a weight. Very, very simple concept, but easy to understand. But the idea is you want to train close to muscle failure, you want to push yourself aerobically. But this idea of concurrent training done once a week to once every two weeks will allow you to maintain fitness, muscle mass, anaerobic fitness, for up to three months. There are obviously genetic variabilities in this equation. There are nutritional parts of this equation, like if you're eating inadequate amounts of protein, I doubt that you would see the same results in muscle mass maintenance versus eating adequate amounts of of protein. But it is really good to know. And it leads me to think about one other thing that's important, especially if you're injured or if you are unable to lift weights, maybe joint complications, maybe lack of access to a place where you can train efficient the sauna is also interesting. This is a little heat hack I mentioned in the introduction because there are a lot of studies that are now highlighting the potential benefits of sauna, not just for muscle recovery, but muscle growth. So the heat shock proteins that you get when you're sitting in a sauna, especially for 20 to 45 minutes, those aid in repairing muscle damage and they support muscle protein synthesis. So you can actually maintain muscle or theoretically even build muscle, especially if you're detrained by stressing your body with heat. Sauna can also elevate growth hormone levels significantly. There was one study that noted a five fold increase in growth hormone levels with two 20 minute sessions in the sauna separated by a brief cooling period. So that's like the growth hormone stack, right? You sauna for say like 20 minutes, jump in a cold plunge for two minutes, get back in the sauna for 20 minutes. That really increases growth hormone dramatically. You get improved blood flow and reduced inflammation, which can improve recovery and allow you to train and build muscle more efficiently, oxygenate muscles better. A higher sauna temperature seems to be even better when it comes to the ability of sauna to be able to build muscle, stimulate growth hormone release and allow for muscle maintenance. So generally you have to get somewhat hot. As a matter of fact, some of these studies were using up to 212 degrees Fahrenheit, which you're not going to get from an infrared sauna. You know, if my, if my number one goal, to be honest with you, was to maintain or build muscle with the sauna practice, I would go up to a dry sauna and spend time in the higher amounts of heat to get the better effects.

And look, I'm not going to lie, you're not going to become the Incredible Hulk if for some reason that's your goal or very strong and functionally fit by just sitting in a sauna. But it is good to know that it can be used for not just muscle recovery, but also muscle maintenance or muscle growth. So one interesting study was called the effects of 12 sessions of high temperature sauna baths on body composition in healthy young men. And the abstract of this, and this was 100 degrees Celsius. So yeah, over, over 200 degrees Fahrenheit. They investigated a bunch of healthy young men. They had them do 12 sauna sessions, not all in a row on the same day. I believe they split these up over, over about two weeks. And they looked at the muscle mass of those who did the heat at high temperatures versus those who did not do the sauna. And There was a significant increase in the sauna group in the muscle, the bone mineral density and the bone mineral content of the legs that they were measuring via a DEXA scan, which is super interesting. Healthy young men can actually get hypertrophy, but by doing nothing else but getting exposed to high amounts of heat for 12 consecutive days, that is pretty impressive. And so, again, the main thing that the researchers attributed this to was the synthesis of heat shock proteins. They also suspect that heat can activate what's called the kinase B protein, rapamycin target in mammals, the mtor signaling pathway, which can also assist with muscle protein synthesis. And the bone metabolism piece is super interesting. But there seems to be an increase in the cells, the osteoblastic cells, responsible for increasing bone density. Kind of paradoxical, isn't it, because you'd think if you were sweating a whole bunch, you'd be at risk for mineral loss and osteopenia or osteoporosis. I'm assuming that these folks were replenishing and hydrating well and adding electrolytes in, so that didn't occur. But yeah, the bone mass piece, the muscle mass piece, it's super interesting. When it comes to a sauna, no changes in fat parameters. By the way, doing regular sauna does not seem to nuke fat. It may cause a little bit of a detoxification effect, the loss of toxins from fat cells. And when you detox, you do potentially create less fat cells to store new toxins. But don't look to a sauna for massive amounts of fat loss. But for muscle maintenance, muscle gain, bone density increases seems to be a pretty good idea. So that's cool.

So what else? You know, this is kind of related. This was an article that recently came out in the Guardian and it's, it's related to this idea of how often you can work out. So this is interesting. Check this out. It's a study of nearly 90,000 people enrolled in the UK Biobank project. They found that weekend warriors who fit a week's worth of exercise into one or two days, for example, the weekend had a lower risk of developing more than 200 diseases compared with fully inactive people. Right. So basically cramming your training into the weekend, you know, I don't think it's as good. You're probably higher risk of injury and overtraining than spreading your training sessions consistently out over the week, but you still get a ton of benefits. Reduced risk of a whole bunch of mortality, increasing conditions. So in terms of the actual amount of training, these folks are squeezing 150 minutes or more into a weekend. But again, back to the minimal training. Let's say you have a busy week. You're not able to train at all Monday through Friday because you're launching a new product or you have a lot of meetings or you're sick or you had a new baby. Whatever. You can just get in some massive training sessions on the weekend and still get a ton of results, especially if you're using that tip I gave you about concurrent aerobic and strength training. So it's good to know that even though you might see people on Instagram posting daily 4am sessions and in the gym that you can still stay pretty fit by cramming on the weekend or in a busy period of your life, just training with a real solid training session once every one to two weeks. Maybe throwing in some sauna here and there and you're not going to lose all your gains, bro. I still think consistent daily training is a good idea, especially for the mental benefits which these studies didn't look into. But when it comes to maintaining muscle, maintaining bone density, etc. Pretty good case to be made for minimalist training. When the time arises that you need to do it, hit subscribe, leave a ranking, leave a review. If you got a little extra time, it means way more than you might think. Thank you so much.