EP42, Minimum Effective Dose Fitness

Are you stuck in the "all-or-nothing" trap? If you can't spend 90 minutes in the gym, do you feel like the day is a wash? In this solo Coach’s Corner session, Matt Terry breaks that cycle by revealing how to get 90% of your fitness results in just 30% of the time. Whether you are navigating a "sticky season" at work or just trying to protect your baseline, this episode is your blueprint for staying unstoppable when life gets loud.

In this episode, we deep dive into:

• The Power of Compound Movements: Why "accessory" moves are a waste of time when you’re busy and why the Strict Press, the "Truth Teller", is the ultimate efficiency tool for your shoulders and core.
• The 2-Day Maintenance Rule: The surprising data showing that just two days a week of heavy lifting can preserve your strength for months.
• The Walking Pad Strategy: How to bank 8,000 steps while you work by matching your pace to your tasks (1.5 mph for typing vs. 3.0 mph for listening).
• The "Cycle of Doom": Why skipping meals because you’re "too busy" triggers a catabolic state that crushes your energy and sleep.
• The 30g Protein Rule: A non-negotiable tactic to protect your muscle mass and stabilize your blood sugar to prevent 3:00 AM wake-ups.

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Transcript

Support The Show Raffle Details

Minimum Effective Dose Strength Training

Daily Movement And The Walking Pad

Fueling Basics And The Protein Rule

Sleep Issues From Underfueling

Define Your Minimum And Send Questions

Matt 0:16

Let's go. Welcome to Unstoppable by Design. We talk all things fitness, mindset, and what it means to truly be unstoppable inside and outside the gym. I'm Matt Terry, and today's episode is a little bit different. Today is going to be a solo coach's corner session. We're going to do a deep dive into some minimum effective dose work, or if you abbreviate it, MED. This episode's going to be for the person who feels like they're failing because they can't spend 90 minutes in the gym. I'm going to show you how exactly to get 90% of the results in 30% of the time. Before we dive into that, want to talk about our recent new support the show feature. So it should be in the episode description, or if you're checking us out on our website, which is www.unstoppable by design podcast.com. We've got a support the show button there. For as little as $3 a month, you can enter to win our monthly raffles. Our next one's coming up on April 4th. And on the 4th, we're giving away a full ride to our Ultimate Boot Camp Challenge, which is starting on April 25th. So for as little as $3 a month, you can enter to win these monthly raffles. This one, if you're a local, you get the full UBC membership. You can attend, you can give that membership away. You can sell the membership if you want to. But for yeah, as little as $3 a month, you can get a package valued at $199. It's a pretty good deal. If you're a remote listener and you're like, I can't drive all the way to Laconia, New Hampshire. Well, we're going to be giving away four weeks of one-on-one remote coaching. So still throw your hat in. We're going to be giving away different prizes, just like this one, as the weeks go on. And so, yeah, that raffle, you got to be entered to win before April 4th. That's when the drawing's going to happen. And then we're going to announce the next one from there. So join up, support the show, click the button, and we'll see you guys there. Now, jumping back into the show, talking about the minimum effective dose. I want to talk about strength in the beginning or planning your training. Our first concept here, when time is short, is that you can't waste a lot of energy on accessory moves. You've got to focus on compound movements or movements that work a bunch of different muscle groups together to recruit the most amount of muscle mass. In a previous episode, we talked about one of these movements uh called the strict press, and we called it the truth teller. So I think the strict press is one of the most ultimate efficiency tools. Now when you when you hear that, you might think, well, how? A strict press is just using your shoulders. You're just going to get a shoulder workout. That's it. But this movement requires your feet to be rooted into the ground, your glutes or your butt to be squeezed, and your core to be braced. I mean, it is full activation down. I mean, you should even feel your quads engaging as you're, you know, gripping into the floor with your feet. You know, your butt is braced, your core braced as well, and everything just feels very, very solid from the shoulders down. That way, when we press up overhead, it's not just the shoulders working. This is a, like I said before, a compound movement. And so it's going to recruit the most amount of muscle going into it. You know, if your ribs flare up, then you've lost the rep. You've lost some form. You want to keep your ribs down. You want to push your head through the window as you press that bar overhead, and you're training your entire midline while building shoulder strength. Again, if you're low on time or time is short, you can't waste energy on training different muscle groups independently because that just takes more time. So, to be simple, we want to work things together. So working your core at the same time you're working your shoulders is a win. That's what we want to focus on when time gets short. We want to do compound movements. Again, strict press is just one example, just because we recently had an episode on it. Another one could be squatting. I mean, there's nothing more functional in the world than being able to do a good squat. So if you only have 15 minutes, do one heavy compound lift. It could be a squat, could be uh could be a deadlift, or it could be a press. You know, two days a week of heavy compound lifting is enough to maintain almost all of your strength for months. Now think about that for a second. We said two days a week. In a previous episode, we talked about this. Two days a week is good for maintenance. It's actually really good when you're starting something like this, like a training like this high-intensity group class or something like that. You start with two days a week, you get your feet wet, your body's challenged. But after about six months, two days a week becomes primarily like a maintenance thing. It's not super physiologically challenging. That's going to be reserved for more three and even four or five times a week. Two times a week is definitely maintenance. So when we go back and we think two days a week of heavy compound lifting is enough to maintain almost all of your strength for months. That is that is legit. So if you're short on time and you're just trying to get through whatever life's throwing at you, the curveballs that may be, really tough season. We want to go for the minimum effective dose, and that could be two days a week. So shifting gears, we're gonna be looking at daily movement. So I'd like you to try to set a step goal. 10,000 steps is awesome, but maybe even if it's a minimum effective dose of 5,000 steps in a day, you don't always need to work out to stay fit. I prefer you to work out because I love the types of workouts that we do. But do you need to do a workout to stay fit? No, you just need a baseline of movement. So there's this thing that I have recently discovered in just like the past year, but it's the walking pad. All right, so I'm gonna I'm gonna call this the walking pad strategy. So if you work from home or you spend some time in the office and they allow you to have a walking pad, heck, use that thing while you're doing whatever work you're doing. For example, I if I had one, it maybe I'm gonna put this on a future Christmas list or something here, but I would I would use that walking pad while I'm studying for my real estate exam. Like, or or unless you're somebody that can't like walk and read at the same time, then then maybe this is hazardous. Don't don't do that. But you would set the pace to something small, like 1.5 to 2.5 miles per hour, something that's a walk pace for active tasks. Like, you know, you typing or doing emails, you can set your computer up on your desk or you can do some reading. I would do something a little bit faster, if you can, for more like passive things, like listening to this podcast or even uh attending a meeting. Although if you start to get a little out of breath, maybe you dial it back a little bit just so you're not winded for the meeting. I don't depends on how important the meeting is, I guess. Um, but you know, if you're walking at two miles per hour for just two hours while you work, you're gonna bank roughly and you know, people's legs are different lengths and steps are different lengths. But you you're looking at maybe around 8,000 steps. This is gonna keep your metabolism high and firing and your joints mobile without you ever having to put on gym clothes. Now, I mean you you crank the miles per hour up a little bit, and yeah, right. Now you might you might need jogging shorts on for this. But okay. Switching gears into minimum effective dose in considering fueling or protecting the baseline, I guess, for your body. Even when you're doing the minimum in the gym to hold on to that progress, you know, through whatever sticky season you're in, you cannot underfuel your body. All right. So fueling is a non-negotiable. You've got to figure this out. So the BMR or basal metabolic rate reality check is it's what your body needs just to exist. If you don't know what that is, we've got plenty of resources. I mean, if you haven't done an in-body scan, we have one at Juggernaut. Just come on in, get the scan, and it'll tell you your basal metabolic rate. This is the cost of energy for your body just to exist. Just being alive burns this X amount of energy per day. Never mind if you're you know working out or anything, adding locks or movement on top of that. This is just existing. If you stop eating because you're too busy to eat, your body enters a catabolic state, which is a state of breakdown, which leads to low energy, poor sleep, a cycle of, I'm gonna call it doom, a cycle of doom. It's not an official term, but it's something that Emily and I talked about last week. So if you're like, hey, I'm too busy today, I'm not gonna eat because I just don't have time for it. Well, your your body doesn't care. Your body burns X amount of energy just to survive. If you get into a pattern of not fueling your body when it needs to survive, then you enter this perpetual state of breakdown. And then, I mean, for sure, there goes your gains. So, something Emily talked about last week, I'm gonna hit it a couple times, is the 30 grams of protein rule. So, to protect your muscle while you're busy, aim for 30 grams of protein at every meal, roughly. This unlocks muscle protein synthesis and keeps your body from breaking down its own tissue for energy. Think about that for a second. If you if you're not eating because you're busy, your body's like, hey, I'm gonna get that fuel somewhere. Maybe it doesn't have a tremendous amount of fat to burn, it's gonna start breaking down your muscle with it. So it's not the best way to go about this. You need to eat, you need to be really making sure that you're not underfueling your body. All right. And then there's, you know, we talked about it last week as well, the sleep connection. Underfueling your body leads to blood sugar crashes that could wake you up at 3 a.m. So a small, complex carb snack, like Emily suggests, half cup of oatmeal. I threw out pie. Maybe, maybe pie is not the answer. Uh, maybe not at all, before bed can stabilize your blood sugar and help you stay asleep. So, shout out if you are somebody who wakes up constantly in the middle of the night and it's you can't quite figure it out. You want to put the label on it and be like, I'm waking up because I gotta go to the bathroom, but maybe you don't actually have to go to the bathroom. This could be something that applies to you. Uh so making sure that we're eating enough through the day that our timing of the food is really important as well. And of course, if you're adding activity, make sure you're shooting above your basal metabolic rate or your BMR, just so that way you're not going down into the negative with that. So, this was a quick episode. We talked about minimum effective dose in a couple different areas. Just know that being unstoppable isn't about being perfect. It's about continually making those small deposits and not stopping completely. If you can't do a 60-minute session, do 15 minutes. If you can't meal prep for the week, just hit your protein for the day, all right? Those 30 grams of protein at each meal throughout the day. So, unstoppable challenge for this next week, I want you to define your quote unquote minimum. If your schedule blows up, what is the one 15-minute routine you'll commit to instead of quitting? Maybe it's 50 air squads and 50 push-ups in your living room. Maybe it's just swapping out, like we talked about last week, swapping out one of those processed foods that may make its way into your daily intake and switch it out for fruit or even a small snack, like nuts. All right, do this so that way you never have to say, hey, I didn't work out today, or I didn't do something that's gonna make me 1% better. I'm hitting that minimum effective dose. Again, let's hit that unstoppable challenge. Once you define your minimum, let's get it for next week. Let me know. I want to hear from you. So, in our episode description, there's a box in there that you can click that says, send us a question. Let me know what you want to know about. I want to create episodes that answer questions because chances are if you're thinking about it, other people are thinking about it, and we've probably got the answer. As long as it's not something about, I think we talked to the best. Don't ask me about like Jupiter or the moon or something like that. I can't help you out there. Something about your health or your body, I've got you. And remember, support the show, a little as $3 a month. All right, the links in the show notes, and it'll get you entered to win the April 4th Ultimate Boot Camp Raffle. New episodes land every Tuesday, and until then, be well, be unstoppable.