Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 100 -*GIVEAWAY* + 10 Lessons for Life & Q+A

Episode Date: April 28, 2021

Welcome and thanks for listening to the ONE-HUNDREDTH episode of the dynamic dialogue podcast. As a sign of my appreciation for your listenership, I've teamed up with my good friend Austin Current to give away 5 copies of his new book "The Science of Strength Training."-Entering the giveaway is simple! 1. Share this episode to your Instagram story.2. Tag me (so I can see it).3. Follow @scienceofstrengthtraining4. Tag @science of strength training (bonus entry).***Winners will be notified via Instagram***---Thanks For Listening!---RESOURCES/COACHING: I am all about education and that is not limited to this podcast! Feel free to grab a FREE guide (Nutrition, Training, Macros, Etc!) HERE! Interested in Working With Coach Danny and His One-On-One Coaching Team? Click HERE! Want To Have YOUR Question Answered On an Upcoming Episode of DYNAMIC DIALOGUE? You Can Submit It HERE!Want to Support The Podcast AND Get in Better Shape? Grab a Program HERE!----SOCIAL LINKS: Sign up for the trainer mentorship HEREFollow Coach Danny on INSTAGRAMFollow Coach Danny on TwitterFollow Coach Danny on FacebookGet More In-Depth Articles Written By Yours’ Truly HERE!Support the Show.

Hey, everybody, welcome in to what is the 100th episode of the dynamic dialogue podcast. And I am so excited to be with you guys here today. As of recording, it's about 10am on April 27. I just got back from a walk with Cooper. The weather here in California is phenomenal. All of the flowers are in bloom. The trees are in bloom. Everything's green. There's not a cloud in the sky. And it is a truly, truly wonderful, beautiful day. And I'm happy to be recording this episode today because, like I said, this is episode 100. And I have a giveaway for you guys to kind of celebrate thematically what this podcast is all about, and show my appreciation and gratitude to you guys as listeners. And while this is certainly a podcast that touches on more topics than just health and fitness, I really wanted to reach out to my community of listeners that is particularly interested in anatomy, the fundamentals of human physiology and biomechanics. And so the giveaway today is going to be five copies. I'll be giving away five

copies of the science of strength training, which is a visual encyclopedia of pretty much everything you could ever want to know about the benefits of strength training. As somebody who's been coaching for 10 years, who's been in this industry recreationally for even longer than that, strength training is a huge part of my wellness routine. It's what I do professionally as a personal trainer, whether that's in person or online. Every client that I work with, we incorporate some form of strength training because it's just that beneficial to your long-term health. And this is a resource that I absolutely love. I think it's fabulous. I'm great friends with the author, Austin Current, and I'm really excited to give this away today. So in celebration of 100 episodes, there will be five copies of the Science of Strength Training

going out to five of you guys. All you have to do to enter the giveaway. I'm making it very simple. Share this episode to your Instagram story, tag me that way I can see it. That's the only way I'll see your entry and be sure to follow the science of strength training on Instagram. I will link them in the show notes. If you want bonus points, you can tag them as well. But again, I'll be picking five listeners and sending you a copy of this book. If you already bought a copy based on the interview that I did with Austin, that certainly does not preclude you from entering the giveaway. If you have one and you still win, you can pass the one you bought along and keep this one. So one way or another, guys, thanks so much for joining this. This whole podcast has been an endeavor in helping people and trying to educate

you guys with the best evidence-based information I have access to, my amazing friends, and then some of what I've picked up in 10 plus years of coaching clients. So more than happy to do this for you. Super happy every single one of you is here. And we are going to open up today's episode with something pretty unique, something I have not done before. We're going to close with a Q&A. We often do health, fitness, wellness, performance Q&As here on the podcast. We'll be answering a ton of your questions here at the end, especially given the nature of the episode. For episode 100, I felt like I should do something special. And I love to answer your questions. But today I wanted to share 10 quotes or lessons that have changed my life and not just the quote or the lesson, but also kind of give you some context and hopefully

give you guys some tools so you can learn from my mistakes, borrow some of this wisdom that I've gotten from other people. And I feel that in a world where we spend so much time focusing on the myopic stuff, we all feel a lot of pressure to be experts, you know, to really dive into 10 lessons that have changed my life. And the first is a quote from the Tao Te Ching, which was written by Lao Tzu. And this is ancient Chinese philosophy. You, without a doubt, are familiar with some of the proverbs that have made the Tao Te Ching quite famous. Proverbs that have made the Tao Te Ching quite famous. One of them that I'm pretty sure everybody's aware of is the journey of a thousand miles begins with one simple step, right? So you've probably heard that quote before. The Tao is quoted quite frequently.

But my favorite verse in the entirety of the Tao Te Ching is nature never hurries, but everything always gets done. The reason that I like this quote, and I think that it resonates with me, and I'm quite inclined to share it is because I'm somebody who deals with anxiety, I feel the social pressure, I feel the cultural pressure to work, to grind, to succeed, to drive. And I have noticed that this is extremely prevalent with people my age, in my industry, and just the general competitive dog-eat-dog world that we live in leaves you feeling guilty if you're not working. If you've ever made it through a grueling work week only to get to the weekend and feel like, you know, hey, I worked all the way for this,

but I can't relax because I feel like I'm lazy or I'm not getting enough done. These are all feelings and emotions that I think that we're familiar with, or a lot of us are familiar with. And I find that being able to balance the desire to work, the desire to produce, loving what you do, right? That's something that I do a lot. You know, when I look back at when I went to college and I was doing my undergraduate education, I would get up every morning at 4 a.m., go to the gym, and I would train clients from 5 a.m. till about 8. Then I would work out from 8 to 9. I would take a shower. And I would train clients from about 9.30 to 2, 3, sometimes 4 in the afternoon. And I had managerial duties at that gym too.

When I enrolled for all my classes, I made sure that I took classes in the evening. So hopefully there wasn't too much commuting to and from school. But when I got done working, what was a 5 to 3 or 4 shift, not really a shift, but that's how I scheduled my clients, then I would go to school. And I'd have class usually from like four to 630 and then from seven to 930 because I would take like two classes a day, Monday through Friday. And, you know, I wouldn't get home until close to 10. And then I would have to stay up relatively late and work on homework, getting assignments done, managing things. This was prior to moving into the online coaching space. I was working on social media, but I wasn't entirely sure what that would look like. But

point being, I worked extremely hard for a number of years, putting in at least 75 to 80 hour work weeks. And when I was transitioning out of academia, when I had finished my degree and I went into entrepreneurship, I did a lot of the same stuff. Instead of working from eight to three and then going to school, I worked from eight to three. And then I worked on building my personal brand, building my social media, bringing you guys things like podcasts, articles, free guides, programs, all the different things that I do. And in identifying and really leaning into being a hard worker, I realized I didn't create any time for myself to relax. And I ended up in this trap of constantly being anxious, constantly being hurried, constantly pushing to get things done faster, faster, faster. And even when things were

done, or even when I had a pretty empty scheduled day that I made sure was empty so I could recover, I found myself forcing myself to work. And so when I found this quote, nature never hurries, but everything always gets done. It made a lot of sense. It clicked. And it really forced me to examine the kind of furious pace with which a lot of, not just myself, but a lot of us attack life. We, we, we attack it like, you know, time is precious. Don't get me wrong. Um, but we can't spend so much time working that we forget to actually enjoy life. And so the idea of not feeling hurried, not feeling rushed and understanding that I have the skills and ability to get things done and that I can breathe and actually enjoy the world around me was a really life changing quote. And it was something

that really after some examination, I'm really glad that I came across that. And so that's number one on the list. The second lesson, this isn't in the form of a quote. This is just something that I've learned. And that's that relinquishing how much I cared about other people's opinions of myself has been quite possibly the most freeing thing in my life. When I was younger, in my early 20s, I did what a lot of people do. And, you know, the money that I was making personal training with how When I was younger, in my early 20s, I did what a lot of people do. And you know, the money that I was making personal training with how busy I was working was a lot like I wasn't spending it, I was too busy to spend the money. And being in my early 20s, you know, making at that point, I was probably making about 65 to $85,000 a year as a personal trainer because of

how much I was working. And I was bonusing every month at the gym that I worked at, and I was getting managerial bonuses. So I was very cash flush coming from being raised in a household where money was really hard to come by. And so I did and made the mistake that a lot of people make, which is I immediately turned a lot of that money, not a lot of it, but once I started spending it, into a lot of material things in an effort to project outwardly that, hey, look at me, I'm cool. And I wanted people to acknowledge me and appreciate me and, you know, respect different things about me. And I did that through projection and material wealth and it left me entirely unfulfilled.

It set me up attracting the wrong friends, attracting the wrong relationships. And I spent a lot of time being, you know, deeply, deeply concerned about other people's opinions of me, which is quite common for, you know, people in general. But I think it's exponentially more common for young people, especially in the digital world, especially when I was in college. And I don't recall when it exactly happened. But there was a day in my life where I reached a place where the opinions of people who I don't know, or who I don't care about really became exponentially less impactful on how I led my life. I stopped looking at things through the lens of well, if I do this, what will other

people think? Instead, I shifted to checking with the people who actually mattered about the plans that I had and the things that I wanted to accomplish, asking them what they thought I should do, asking them if they felt like this seemed like me. And that was it. You know, the limits, like I didn't, I don't consult many people on my decisions, only the people who really matter. And I got a lot of my freedom back. I got a do things that I think are designed or that I'm doing because I'm concerned about what other people feel, which is to say, if I want to do something and I feel like I will be judged for it, the only question I'm likely to ask is judged by whom. And if these people don't matter, then I don't mind. And so that has been an absolutely life-changing lesson for me. Moving on to number three, which is a quote from Mark Twain.

I'm a huge fan of Mark Twain. I actually grew up in a town called Sonora, and one of the neighboring towns just up the highway was called Twain Hart. And it was named after Mark Twain and Bret Hart. But I've been familiar with Mark Twain and his work for quite some time. And he's wonderful if you are someone like myself who loves quotes. But the quote is, the secret to getting ahead is getting started. And I worked with a coach for a year when I was working out of a studio named Matt Freeman. And he had another quote that I absolutely loved, which is start simply and simply start. I loved that

quote. And I feel like these two are very complimentary and that truly the secret to success is getting out of your own way. Right. And a lot of it goes back to number two, not caring about what other people think and just getting started, whether that's with your nutrition, whether that's with your coaching business, whether that's with learning how to play the guitar, you know, investing in your relationships, whatever it is, if you make a point to get started and you get through that initial friction that kind of we all face when we take on something new, daunting that we're not familiar with, it tends to get a lot easier. And I really believe that for most people and for most things, the hardest part really is those first couple steps

because it's unstable footing. We're not sure how it's supposed to feel. It's challenging. And inherently as human beings, we don't love challenges. Not everybody has, not everybody loves challenges. I should say that some people, myself included at times, have become quite comfortable and actually enjoy things that are challenging. That's why I like golf. Golf is hard and I don't think it's ever going to get easier. But I like that. I like the element that, you know, I can go out and play a round of golf and largely play quite poorly. But if I hit, you know, five or six good shots, I'll be out the next day because I can always, you know, zoom in and look at the good stuff and remember how hard it was when I started compared to where I'm at now. I, I'm not amazing. I can only drive the ball about 300 yards. If I make really solid

contact, I hit my three wood about 250 yards. I, all my irons play pretty well and I make good contact, but I still hook the ball, shank the ball, slice the ball, chunk the ball, top the ball all the time. You know, I've missed like 15 birdie putts, you know, and then turned those into just, you know, full blown six putts and you throw the whole hole away. And yeah, it's really frustrating. But I think back to when I first started and I couldn't even get the ball in the air. I couldn't even make contact with the ball. And, you know, getting started and continuing through the tough patch or the rough patches that come was big. Um, I've heard many times from many people, but the person who I know who says this quote the most is Adam from mind pump and Adam, somebody who gave me a lot of opportunities younger earlier in my career when I was a younger man. And I remember when he said this quote for the first time, I was probably 2021. So this was, I'll be 26 next week. So this was over five years ago.

And so this was before we ever worked together professionally. This was just, probably at that point, I had just been, if anything, interning or just offering to help them for free. But he said something that really stuck with me, and it's how you do anything is how you do everything. And the reason I like this quote is because I think it's as simple as just,

it acknowledges the lens with which we look at the world. And what I mean by that is this. If you set out to do things well with intention, you set out to do things the right way, ethically, correctly, with all of your heart in them, that tends to bleed into everything that you do. If you choose to half-ass and you choose to cut corners in your personal life, in your relationships, whether those are romantic relationships or whether those are relationships with friends, you'll find that that shit finds its way right back to you. And not just that, you know, if you half-ass people, people half-ass you back. But if you half-ass relationships or you half-ass business or you half-ass your workouts, that then gives you the license to start half-assing other stuff. And I think it's really important that when you set out to do things, that you set out to do them well. And there are a few things in life more rewarding than doing things well. And so I love the idea that you set the tone for how you're going to live your entire life with how you choose to approach the things that you do.

And so the quote is how you do anything is how you do everything. But I really like just rephrasing it as the way you do things is the way you do life. And so if you do things with passion, you do things with energy, you do things with enthusiasm, you do things to serve, you will find that your life has enthusiasm, passion, and the elements of service required to make it a good life. But I find that in the same sense as, you know, I have done these things, if you cut corners, if you have fast things, if you don't put your all into it, very quickly, that starts to bleed into everything that you do. And so this next quote, man, I'm, I might actually get this wrong, who said this,

and I probably should have looked it up previous to doing the podcast, but I tend to wing almost everything I do on the podcast. Ironic that I'm talking about being intentional and putting your all into things. And then I come on the podcast and be like, yeah, I just shoot from the hip. But I feel that authenticity really is important, especially in a medium like this. But the quote is, and again, I'm not entirely sure, but I think it's Theodore Roosevelt. People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. And this is something that I have learned, again, the hard way through mistakes that I had made early on in my personal training career. When I got started, I was 18 years old. I had a retainer in my mouth and I looked like I was still in high school. an assessment for would always qualify like, are you even old enough to be doing this?

Or why, you know, a lot of the pushback I would get was related to my age or my maturity. And so my initial response to that was, I'm going to learn so much about this, about health, fitness, fat loss, performance enhancement, pain mitigation, that nobody is ever going to sit in front of me and fucking make me feel bad about how old I am. I am going to learn everything there is to learn. I got so jaded. I got so frustrated. And in every professional setting I've ever worked, I have always been the youngest person. I was the youngest person, youngest trainer at the gym. I first got hired at youngest trainer at the studio, youngest person that I know of that is doing, you know, online coaching fairly consistently and at scale. You know, there are a lot of things that I have been, you know, doing earlier than most people. And that's just a function of when

I got started. It doesn't mean anything other than that. But I've always felt like people hold my age against me, even in romantic relationships. People judge you based on your age. We'll just leave it at that. And so I doubled down on this being jaded and feeling like if I knew everything, people would just fucking listen. And that's all there is to it. Like, you won't say anything about my age and you will let me tell you what you need and you'll decide to work with me and you'll sign up to be my client if I can outsmart you and just blow you away with how much I know. And that did have a positive impact on my business. And it did, in truth, help me grow and expand my sphere of influence, not just in the gym, but on social media and on

things like podcasting. You guys choose to listen to me because you acknowledge that I have a particular expertise that most people don't. And I think that that's great. But in truth, I didn't start connecting with people in a meaningful way, whether it was clients, consultations, friends, family, loved ones, whoever, until I acknowledged that it's not so much that people need to know what you know, but they need to know that they can trust you. And with clients especially, I found that I didn't need to impress them with how much I knew to get them to commit to either working with me or working towards improving their health. I needed to convince them to commit to either working with me or working towards improving their health, I needed to convince them that they could trust me and that I cared about helping them.

And that helped me make a lot of strides professionally. And even to this day, when I do consultations for online clients, one of the things that I will tell them when we have our intake call is, hey, listen, the most important thing for me isn't that you sign up today and that you decide to work with me and you decide to pay me. It has absolutely nothing to do with that at all. But what started happening when I would tell people, hey, I'm looking forward to talking to you today. I want to help you troubleshoot these problems. If you can afford to work with me, awesome. If not, you'll get something out of the call. Is that all right? It really improved the amount of people

that started working with me. And it wasn't anything intentional. It was just my way of saying, hey, look, like you're making time for this call because you need help. And I have a passion for helping people in this area. And so leading with the intention of, I don't want to project or make you think I'm smart or make you think I'm cool. The best way to enter into relationships, in my opinion, is in letting people know that you give a fuck and that you're not selfish. in the world. And many of us have been burned by them. And to just lead with, you know, hey, I'm going to be very much present and make sure that you know, my intentions are pure. That's a very, very powerful thing that you can do, I think, in any industry. And so I really like to lead with that. Another lesson that I've learned the hard way, this is number six, is that you can't save everybody. And I think a lot of us want to do that, particularly those of us who work in something like health and fitness or like nursing or any medical profession,

we get into it because we really want to help people. But in truth, there are some people that even though they'll look you dead in the face and beg for your help and pay you to help them, they're not there yet emotionally. They're not ready to cross the bridge that they'll need to cross to change their behavior to make the change. And very early on in my career, I would put together perfect programs, perfect nutritional protocols, give them to clients and they wouldn't do it. And instead of looking at it and going, oh, was that plan adherable? Was that to where that client was at?

Or was the client ready for this change? I would go, I have failed. I suck. I'm bad because they didn't reach their goals. And internalize a lot of this stuff. And I think one of the things that's important about acknowledging that you can't save everybody is so long as you keep your side of the street clean, you do your part, you deliver things in a way that you think is proper, whether that's in relationships, professionally, romantically, whatever. At the end of the day, people are going to fucking do what people are going to do. And you cannot be responsible for changing other people's behaviors. It's extremely difficult. You can try though. So the quote is, you can't save everyone, but you can always try. And it's a tough one. And the thing to know about this

is you need to know when to stop caring so much about other people, or you need to know when your desire to care and take care of other people is actually actively hurting your ability to care for yourself. So if you're internalizing other people's failures or the way you are making assumptions about how other people think about you you or you're doing something like I mentioned in the second one, which is you're ruminating heavily on other people's opinion of you, you're going to be in trouble. And so I think you do the best you can to help everybody with the understanding that not everybody's ready yet or not everybody's there yet and that it's not your job to get them there. You can try, but at the same time, it's never gonna be easier or perfect. Hey guys, just wanted to take a quick second

to say thanks so much for listening to the podcast. And if you're finding value, it would mean the world to me if you would share it on your social media. Simply screenshot whatever platform you're listening to and share the episode to your Instagram story or share it to Facebook. But be sure to tag me so I can say thanks and we can chat it up about what you liked and how I can continue to improve. Thanks so much for supporting the podcast and enjoy the rest of the episode. This next quote is a quote from Naval, who if you've followed me for any amount of time, you know, I love Naval, but it's most of life is a search for who and what needs you most. And I think that really

just comes down to meaning to substance, right? Like life is about finding people and things that are worth it, period. And this is another lesson that I've learned the hard way, right? Life is a search for who and what needs you most. And it's not so as to say, like, you need to be going out of your way to find people who need your help. It's more to say that we all have gifts, skills, abilities, personality traits that align us with certain things. I, for one, am particularly aligned with helping people improve their physical health,

their mental health, and make better connections with things that are going to make their life better, healthier, more meaningful, more substantial, right? And so that's what I feel connected to. So when I see the quote, like life is a search for who needs you most and what needs you most, I think the who are people who need my help to help them live a healthier life. And the what is through exercise, nutrition, and coaching, right? And so, and that might change. I think all of us would be foolish to think that who and what might need us might not change as we change.

But that's a quote that really is impactful to me. And it's most of life is a search for who and what needs you most. Because once you identify those things, you can really put all of yourself into something, which is part of what makes life so meaningful. hard work. If you listen this far, you know that I worked a lot harder, or I shouldn't say a lot harder, but I worked a lot more than I currently do. I still work a lot when I was in college and, you know, operating a full-time personal training business and going to school. And the lessons that I got from that, the lessons that I got from, you know, growing up in a town with parents who were either not present or disabled, meant that I had to step up to the plate early on and work really, really hard. Whether that was with sports, with school, stepping up around the house,

with doing things to help my sick parents. All these different things all required me to work really, really hard. All of that hard work taught me so many invaluable things. And so when we talk about there's no substitute for hard work, we often talk about that with regards to productivity, meaning if you want to accomplish something, hard work is the best thing to do. To me, that's a duh. But I think that there is benefit for in working hard for the sake of understanding just how much you can handle. And I don't think a lot of people really ever kind of touch base with how strong they are

and how much they can deal with because they never get out of their comfort zone and they never really work that hard. Number nine is be honest with yourself above all else. Be a critical thinker, analyze your actions, your decisions, ask yourself, why do I do these things? Not in, not to like do it sarcastically, but truthfully, like, why do I do this? Why does this hurt my feelings? Why did I say that thing? my feelings? Why did I say that thing? Pay close attention to the decisions that you make, the things that you say and what you do. And what you'll find if you do this very quickly is you'll start to touch base with who it is that's really calling the shots. And we like to think that we have totally conscious control over all of our decisions and all of our actions and everything you do and say is calculated, but it's not. A lot of the things that we do that are positive or negative in our lives are subconscious, and they're connected to whether it's past trauma, insecurities, whatever, whatever. And just being present and saying, okay, hold on a second.

Why does this make, why does what this person said to me hurt my feelings? Why does what I said, why did I say that thing that I said? Being available emotionally to unpack that stuff as you do it and being aware that, hey, I should pay close attention to the things that I do and that I say and be mindful of where that's coming from. This has been powerful for me. It's something that I'm still working on. I'm certainly not far from perfect, but it has been an excellent exercise in kind of getting to the bottom of really who I am as a person. And I think that'll better help you connect with yourself, clients,

friends, loved ones, all of that. And the last lesson is, and this is something that I learned when I was a sophomore in high school, and I kind of reverse engineered what I'm about to tell you from a statistic that was shared in a biology of aging class that I took. And we examined the biological effect of aging on all of the different systems of the body, whether that's, you know, everything from the reproductive system to the brain to the skeletal system or, you know, your skeleton and your muscles and the impact of age-related change on those tissues. And I remember that the teacher shared something on the board, and I'll get the numbers wrong because, again, I didn't look them up,

but men on average lived to be late 60s, early 70s, and women on average lived to be into about their mid-70s. And I had to stop and pause because, and I think this is something that a lot of us do because it's a round number growing up I used to think that I would live to be a hundred years old and I would often think and I remember I had like an existential crisis when I turned 10 and I remember sitting in the back of my mother's car when she was at her boyfriend's house at this point in time and I was was crying, crying, crying,

because I realized that at 10 years old, I only had 90 years left because I had this narrative in my mind. And again, I think a lot of us do this because 100 is a round number. Like I'm going to live to be 100 and then I'm going to die. And 10% of my life is already gone. Why I started thinking about that at 10 years old, I don't know. But my point is, when I was sitting in that class as a sophomore in college, and I saw that we don't live to be 100. And in truth, most men will be lucky to make it to 70. And most women will be lucky to make it to 80. lucky to make it to 80. That was a very big shift for me. And it forced me to acknowledge that life is really short and that we operate like it's not. And you've heard people say, YOLO, life's not guaranteed. You never know what tomorrow is going to bring. All of that stuff is true. But I think you can zoom out and go, okay, are you operating on the assumption that you are going to have like 100 years on this planet and that you're just going to die healthy

at 100? Or is your life going to be a lot more like other people's lives where, quite frankly, you're going to have a lot of struggles and your health is probably going to decline naturally with age. And that if you're a man, you'll be lucky to make it to 70. And if you're a woman, you'll be lucky to make it to 80. And the last 10 to 15 years of your life are probably not going to be that good. Not the way that most people live, not the decisions that most people make. You'll probably be sick. You'll probably be in and out of the hospital. You'll probably be using a lot of pharmaceuticals

just to get by and make your life livable. Unless you take care of your health, you take care of your wellness. And that includes doing shit that makes you happy because a lot of us, and again, this goes back full circle, nature never hurries, but everything gets done. We're so rushed to build something for the future that we forget that the future isn't that long and we don't do enough today. So those are 10 lessons, guys, that have really changed my life and been really impactful for me as a human being. And I'm more than happy to share them with you. I know today's episode is probably a little different, but we are getting into the normal, quote unquote, But we are getting into the normal, quote unquote, less, I should say, philosophical portion of the episodes.

I'm going to answer some of your guys' questions. And so the first question comes from at Ashley Rabordi. And she asks, how can I improve my sleep? I've tried everything. NyQuil, melatonin, everything over the counter. Help. Okay. melatonin, everything over the counter help. Okay, so first things first, NyQuil, as is the case with things like Benadryl, or even alcohol, they act as sedatives, so they can help put you to sleep.

But they don't actually enhance the quality of your sleep. Anything that's acting as a sedative might actually disrupt the depth of your sleep. So meaning, okay, I get eight hours of sleep when I take a Benadryl and I get six hours of sleep when I don't. It's worth noting that the eight hours you get after you take a sedative might be as much, if not less impactful than six hours of non-sedative induced sleep because sleep and sedation aren't the same thing. So the first piece of advice is not to rely on sedatives. Now, melatonin is a little bit different, and it works by kind of modulating the circadian rhythm.

And that's something that I tend to take about one and a half hours before my desired bedtime. And I take it anytime I travel where there's a time zone shift, because again, it can help me set my circadian rhythm ahead of time. So I eliminate feelings of jet lag. However, it's important to acknowledge that your sleep is by and large a product of your lifestyle decisions. So things that you can do with your lifestyle to improve sleep that don't involve over-the-counter supplementation. Because outside of melatonin, I really only recommend glycine and magnesium. But from a lifestyle standpoint,

you can exercise, right? Exercise improves sleep quality. You can reduce your stress by doing things like nasal breathing, diaphragmatic breathing previously to going to sleep. So a little bit before bed, you can actually get your nervous system out of a sympathetic anxious state into that parasympathetic rest and digest state, you'll do very well in terms of how you manage buffer your stress, all of that stuff. Another really big one that I think is important is to look at caffeine consumption. So America has absolutely normalized vehement and just complete abuse of caffeine. And it's important to acknowledge that caffeine is a drug. And so while we don't necessarily think about it as a drug, we think about it like, oh, this is just something that's in coffee

and it helps get me going and I really like that. Well, it helps get you going because it's a stimulant and it has a very powerful effect on your brain. It has a really powerful effect on how it is that, so to just put it succinctly, a variety of the processes that we do throughout the day lead to a buildup of a chemical called adenosine. And adenosine binds to the brain And that is what makes you feel sleepy. Caffeine has a very high affinity for that receptor. So adenosine and caffeine, they both want that receptor. And when you get tired and you naturally have a buildup of adenosine, you get sleepy and

you go to sleep. You can bypass that with caffeine because caffeine will compete with adenosine. It will bind to the same receptor and it has a stimulatory effect, right? It's excitatory. It gets you going. So after a while, again, if you don't actually get the sleep, caffeine stops actually having an impact very quickly. It stops making you feel, you know, Ooh, I had my caffeine. I'm all powered up. We all know that feeling, right? That's not normal for very long. After a while, what you'll find is you either need more caffeine because it becomes less effective, right? Or caffeine just stops giving you energy at all. And really what it ends up just doing is it kind of makes you feel less fatigued, but it doesn't give you any energy. And I think that that makes sense,

but it might be a little too scientific, but you get the point. So do what you can to improve your lifestyle first and foremost, and that will make a big difference. Next question is from at the second circle, and she asks tips for clients who struggle with knee pain on things like lunges or step-ups. So knee-related pain is very common when you're training general population clients, particularly through movements like lunges, split squats, or even deep squats, because they involve quite a bit of knee flexion and extension. So one of the things we want to consider anytime we have a joint that's communicating, hey, this is stressing me out, this is causing pain, is we want to ask ourselves what tissues influence that joint.

And so, particularly when we talk about the knee and we talk about step-ups or squats, we're really talking about the quadricep tissue, right? And that's the muscle that's helping us really do that. But when we're looking at the joint, we go, okay, we know that the quadriceps are acting to help us step up and down and do these lunges. But what other muscles are influencing the joints here? All right. And we're going to have to talk about the calves, the gastrocnemius, right? So the gastrocnemius and the soleus, those two muscles make up the quote unquote calves. And the hamstrings, the muscles on the posterior or backside of the leg, those help have a stabilizing effect on the knee.

And quite frankly, you want to have symmetrical strength and development of the posterior and anterior chain. And what you'll find with general population is they tend to have a lot of weakness through all of the extension musculature, whether that's glutes, whether that's hamstrings, whether that's lower traps, those tend to get quite weak. And so for clients that are exhibiting knee pain on exercises like step ups and lunges, I often like to increase the amount of posterior chain work that we do in our training, because I find that increasing the amount of posterior chain work that we do in our training, because I find that increasing the amount of posterior chain work actually helps joints feel better. And the same thing, and this is again

anecdotal, but the same thing can be true of the shoulder joint. Like if your shoulders bug you because of how much you bench, it's not rare to see that doing a lot more upper back work, aka training the posterior side of that shoulder joint, tends to make that pain a little bit more manageable, if not less present altogether. And speaking of the hamstrings, we're going to go to our next question from at Dawn LI, and she asks, what's the best hamstring exercise? And so I don't really answer the what's the best exercise question anymore, because if you want to develop any muscle, whether it's your calves, your biceps, your delts, your chest, your back, your glutes, or in this case, your hamstrings, and you're only going to use one muscle, or I'm sorry, one movement, you're going to leave a lot of stones unturned. You're going

to leave a lot of gains on the table. And so instead, I like to approach these questions as maybe we could determine what the most effective exercise is for you, for your body. So for example, what I mean by that is you could say, what's the best exercise for quads? And somebody could go squats. Okay, that might be true, but you also have to have the anthropometrics or the body shape and the biomechanics required to really load up your quads. So for a short person like me with ridiculous ankle mobility, relatively low center of gravity, great hip mobility, I can squat really effectively through a full range of motion and really challenge my quads. But for somebody who's like maybe seven feet tall, the squat might not be the best exercise

to develop their quads. So the answer as to which is the best overall is way too individualized to answer. However, the best way to train a muscle group for hypertrophy, in my opinion, is to train through a variety of rep ranges at a variety of, uh, in a variety of positions that challenge the muscle across the contractile range. So what I mean by that is, we'll talk about the biceps. Uh, you have a muscle like, or a movement like doing a incline bench curl where your shoulders are going to actually end up a little bit in extension. So they're going to be behind your midline. If you're seated, they're going to be actually back. Your shoulders will kind of be back. The

dumbbells will be behind you kind of by your butt and you curl up. And that really challenges the biceps in the lengthened position. If you turned around and did the same exercise with your chest laying on the bench instead of your back and did what we call a spider curl, that is hardest on the muscles or the biceps in the shortened position. So if you want to develop a tissue, you want to challenge it in the shortened position, in the lengthened position. There seems to be a little bit more research as to the lengthened position being particularly important for hypertrophy. That's really cool. But still, and even things that challenge evenly throughout like the entire strength profile of that muscle. And so that's really important to do. And usually we have to select a variety of exercises to do it. Another thing that's important is training. In my opinion,

I think it's important to train at a variety of repetition ranges that allow for training close to failure. So you want to train heavy. And what's a good exercise to train heavy and close to failure for the hamstrings? Maybe it's a barbell RDL or a dumbbell RDL, but you also want to train high reps close to failure. And so are you going to do a heavy RDL at high reps close to failure? I'm sure not. And I'm sure not going to have my clients do that because I think that at some point we end up with the potential to fatigue some of the supporting tissues and maybe end up with issues, tissue issues, if you will. So I might use a machine movement, something that trains knee flexion, like the seated hamstring curl or the lying hamstring curl.

So you use a variety of exercises that train the joints at different positions through different ranges of motion. And that is the best way to optimize for muscular development. And you guys, that's going to do it for today's episode. I appreciate every single one of you for tuning in and listening. Again, I want to let you in on this giveaway. So do me a favor, share this to your Instagram story. Be sure to tag me so I can see it. Tag Science of Strength Training if you want to get extra credit and be sure to follow them. So again, just to repeat those steps, I'm giving away five copies of this awesome book. It's a great resource. I think you guys will enjoy it and I will link it in the show notes.

But all you have to do, share this episode to your Instagram story, tag me so I can see it. That's how I'll count your entry. If you tag Science of Strength Training, you get some bonus points and be sure to follow them. Once you've done all those, you'll be entered in and I will be selecting five winners. I'll tag you guys in my story once I pick them out and you can expect the books to arrive fairly shortly. But give me some time reasonably after this episode. I love helping all you guys out with your education, with your growth, whether you're

coaches, trainers, hobbyists, or enthusiasts. I'm very grateful that you've been along for the ride. It's been a fun 100 episodes, and I'm very much looking forward to the next 100. Do have a great rest of your day. Stay tuned and be sure if you haven't hit subscribe, leave me a five-star rating and review on iTunes. That really makes a difference. It helps me reach more people. All right, you guys have a good one.