Jim Kwik and the speaker discuss tracking muscle growth through functional metrics like push-ups and pull-ups, plus blood work including fasting insulin and triglycerides. The speaker argues these blood markers reflect skeletal muscle health, not just body size.
But what are some of the markers people can use to track their progress? Are there certain metrics that you focus on?
There are 2 main categories. Number one, functionally. You're not competing against anyone else other than yourself. You should be able to improve over time how many pushups you can do, how many pull-ups, how long can you dead hang. There's a series of metrics that you can choose to work on when it comes to strength. The key thing is picking 1 to 3 of those things that you're working on and that you have visibility that you are getting stronger. And that's a functional piece. How do you know that muscle is healthy? The strength, the ability to improve, these all relate to the health of skeletal muscle. From a blood work perspective, blood work is extremely available to people, and we think that muscle health is related to being big and bulky when we know that that's not true. You can look at a fasting insulin level, you can look at blood triglycerides, you could look at a hemoglobin A1C, you could look at LDL cholesterol. These are markers not of obesity, but I would argue that they are biomarkers of muscle health.
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