Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 111: 5 Behaviors To *MAXIMIZE* Gains + My *NEW* Program (Female Physique II)

Episode Date: July 26, 2021

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Hey, everybody, welcome in to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. As always, I'm your host, Danny Matranga, and in today's episode, I'm going to highlight five ways you can enhance your progress in the gym. These are going to be five really simple behaviors that I think you can implement as soon as today to really help you get the progress that you deserve. Nothing's more frustrating for me than when I work with a client who's told me, or when I begin working with a client who's told me, yeah, I've been spending a lot of time going to the gym four to six times a

week. I'm just not seeing the results I want. And that's terrible because that's a lot of time to spend to not get the results you deserve. And if you implement these five behaviors, I think that pretty much every single one of you is going to get amazing results, perhaps the best results you've ever gotten. But before we get into that, one of the things that you can do to help you perform better in the gym and get better results is taking the right supplements. Did you know that supplements are typically marked up six to 12 times before they're sold to you? You're almost always going to end up paying for crappy supplements that are underdosed, they don't have the right amount of effective

ingredients, and you really just end up paying for fancy branding and influencer kickbacks. And even though there are some companies that at least do the service of putting the right ingredients in the product, most of them don't put them in in effective dosages. You see, pixie dusting, or including good ingredients in dosages that aren't effective, is really common. And that's just a short list of some of the stuff that's wrong with our space. But one of the companies that I really enjoy is Legion Athletics. Legion makes some of the best natural clinically dosed supplements that are free of fluff and banned substances. My favorites are the Legion Genesis Greens, the Caffeine-Free Pulse pre-workout, Recharge Creatine for my post-workout, and I

take the Triumph multivitamin every single day. If you want to support the show and try some of the best sports supplements on earth, head over to legion.com, check out using the promo code DANNY, and save 20% off your first order and earn double rewards points. So guys, getting into the meat of today's episode, talking a little bit about what are these behaviors that you can do to optimize your gains. And number one, this is a good one. This is one that I don't think enough people really think about or consider. Number one is what I like to call zooming out.

And you're probably like, what the heck do you mean by zoom out? And it's actually really, really simple. So when I say zoom out, I mean, stop looking at your training as a day to day thing. Like I need to go to the gym today. I need to get a workout in today. What is my workout today? What is my meal like today? What are my, you know, nutritional behaviors today? Did I take my supplements today? What is my workout today? What is my meal like today? What are my, you know, nutritional behaviors today? Did I take my supplements today? Stop looking at it as a day-to-day thing. Zoom out, right? Training, nutrition, lifestyle should be optimized for the long run if you want to make progress. So don't go on Instagram and look for swipe workouts that

you can do today. Everything that you do in the gym and with your nutrition should be congruent and it should follow the long-term plan that you're on. If you want to build muscle or you want to lose body fat, especially a considerable amount of either, it's going to take time and that's totally okay. And while the day-to-day practices are what's going to get you there, being concerned with getting to the gym today, being concerned with getting all your meals in today are all very important. But if everything you do, all of your planning is day-to-day, you are going to fail. You want to execute well in the day-to-day. You want to make the most of each session, but you have to see the whole picture when it comes to

planning. And that means things like sleep, recovery, lifestyle stuff like nutrition, all of that stuff has to be planned out in advance. It will save you so much more time in the long run and make things quite a bit easier if you do this. But here's something that I see a lot that's a little bit problematic. And that's when you take this day-to-day look at things. When shit hits the fan or when life gets tough, it's really easy to miss the gym. It's really easy to skip a meal or to fall off track with your tracking of your nutrition. So what can you do? Well, you can spend time looking and planning ahead.

Maybe every Sunday you can go, okay, what days am I going to get into the gym this week? If I have to miss a day, where's an opportunity where I could make it up with another activity or maybe sneak into the gym on a weekend? What about my meals? Do I have my meals planned? And that doesn't necessarily mean meal prepping. Not everybody likes to meal prep. Perhaps you do something similar to what I do, where you buy a lot of the same foods. So every day for breakfast, I have some toast with some almond butter, a little bit of yogurt, a little bit of, I don't know why I blanked on that, grapefruit slices, the like sliced grapefruit slices that come in a little syrup, as well as a whey shake with greens.

That's my breakfast every single morning. It never changes, but I have to go to the store and make sure that's there. What I will tend to change are my lunches and my dinners, right? I like to eat out and make sure that I'm enjoying myself, but I don't eat out all the time. So I plan out a few times to eat out during the week, but I also plan out a lot of what my meals will be across the week, meaning when I'm at the store, I'm thinking,

okay, I'm going to have this for dinner on Tuesday. I'm going to have this for dinner on Wednesday. And so instead of going, oh my gosh, it's Tuesday. What am I going to eat today? What am I going to train today? Which is how a lot of people operate. I've planned ahead. So make time to plan ahead, zoom out, execute on the day-to-day,day. Let your day-to-day thought processes be about how can I execute this to the best of my ability or how can I pivot if I've fallen off track. Don't spend but every month I sit down, reassess their goals, and make a one-month plan. And we're kind of always tackling one-month plan at a time. Programming is updated weekly, of course, because things like that need to be updated more frequently, because the body is very dynamic. But the plan itself is updated every four or so weeks with programming adjustments coming weekly and macro adjustments coming in as needed. But this frees my clients when they know, okay, I have my training

plan for the week. I know what my macros are. All they have to do is show up. And that's really, really important, which leads me to my second piece, which is follow a program and preferably a simple or boring program. I know what you're thinking, why would I follow a boring program? Well, truth be told, less kind of tends to be more. Doing movements of a really high quality with really good execution, close to failure, is probably going to help you build more muscle than just grabbing random shit you see on swipe workouts on Instagram and throwing it together when you get to the gym. Additionally, the number one drivers of muscle growth are going to be things like progressive overload, or I should say the top drivers of

muscle growth are going to be things like progressive overload, mechanical tension, and just generally becoming a more competent lifter. And that's really hard to do when you're constantly flipping around, whether that's from workout to workout, from movement to movement, or even from program to program. Following a boring but effective program is a tremendous way to build strength. And boring means more or less that I want it to be a program full of stuff you've probably heard of before, like squatting movements, deadlifting movements,

lunging movements, pushing and pulling movements. None of this squat, lunge, press, banded bull crap. You should be doing things that you're relatively familiar with and can perform at a high level, right? Do less movements, but do the right movements really, really well. And that could mean spending a little less time on trying to do new stuff and spending a little more time on trying to figure out what's better for you. Maybe it's a split squat in place of a barbell squat, right? Everybody's a little bit different and certain bodies are certainly more inclined to perform

certain movements better than others. So for example, a taller lifter might do better with a hex bar deadlift than a traditional barbell deadlift. That's fine. That's the kind of exploration you might want to try. Don't spend your time, you know, jumping around from kind of crappy Instagram movement to crappy Instagram movement. Find a program.

Don't neglect training, things like your core, your mobility, or your upper body. You need to make progress with those areas too, right? Okay. And I'm saying this because I find a lot of women tend to neglect their upper body. This is directed towards most people, but I did say there are some tips in here specifically for women, which we'll get to as we go. But really, you want a program that allows for real progress, that doesn't neglect body parts, that prioritizes the ones that matter most, right? And that allows you to put more weight on the bar over the course of an entire training block or training year. That's actually why I put

together my newest program, Female Physique Advanced. It's an entirely new program built from the ground up and designed to help women develop the musculature that I found was most common when people were coming to me looking for coaching. I was getting a lot of, I want to develop my glutes, my quads, my hamstrings, my upper back, and my shoulders. So Female Physique came out about a year ago, and you guys absolutely loved it. It's a really cool bodybuilding program for women that men could do too, as long as you really want to develop your glutes, because there's a lot of glutes in there, that you guys really loved and enjoyed. But Female Physique Advanced takes those concepts to the next level, right? It's a little bit more strength focused. It's a little bit less movement variety. And I quite like it. I think it

might be an actually slightly better program than female physique. And that's saying something because you guys really enjoyed female physique and it was really popular. So going back to kind of following a program that's simple but boring, female physique advanced the first two weeks are a preparatory phase where you focus on movement quality, making sure you understand the basics of how to perform the big exercises, strengthening your core and preparing yourself for the second block, which is a really strength focused block with a lot of linear progression. It's basic, but very effective. You're going to be focusing on the big lifts and putting more weight on the bar before you get to phases three and four, which

are more hypertrophy or muscle growth related that are at moderate and higher rep ranges. So there's a two week moderate rep range phase and a two week high rep range phase. So it comes out to be a 10 week program, right? And you've got two weeks of preparatory phases, four weeks of hardcore strength training, and then four weeks of hardcore hypertrophy training divided into two small blocks. And that means you get to set it and forget it for 10 weeks. And if you purchase the for her bodybuilding bundle, you're going to get 22 weeks of training in between two programs. So this is just an example of why I think it's so important for people to follow a program. Imagine how free you'd feel if for 22 weeks,

almost half a year, you got to go to the gym, not worry about what you had to do. You just had to execute. That is what you want to do. You want to zoom out so that your focus is not on what am I going to do today, but okay, I know exactly what I'm going to do today. And I know the areas where I'm looking to get better, where I'm looking to do more volume, where I'm looking to put more weight on the bar. All of this stuff really matters. Behavior number three, stop fucking around with your nutrition. Nothing plays a bigger role on your body composition or in your body composition than nutrition. If you are not taking your nutrition seriously, you're not taking your training very seriously. And I know what you're thinking. Well, that seems a little bit myopic. That's kind of extreme. It's really not. If you want to train hard, you need to get adequate amounts of calories.

You need to get, and when I say adequate, that does include people who are dieting and looking to lose fat. They need to be sure that they're staying in a calorie deficit. There's no bullshit. Oh, today was a refeed day. Yeah. Well, you had three refeed days this week and you have three fucking refeed days every week. You're not trying to lose body fat. If you had three refeed days this week and you have three fucking refeed days every week. You're not trying to lose body fat if you have three refeed days a week and you can't just call a day where you didn't follow your diet a refeed, right? Be the same thing that you were doing if you were bulking, if you were like, oh, I had a low calorie day to resensitize my gut microbiome. Shut the hell up. You just can't follow anything, right? I know that sounds extreme and that's because it probably

is a little bit. But truth be told, if you want to really nail your training, you want to optimize your gains. That's the title of the podcast. You need to get your nutrition dialed. Hit your daily calories. Hit your macros every day. Not just your protein, but really get your carbs and fats down. Try to time your carbs and protein efficiently so that you have fuel before and after your training to optimize muscle growth and to minimize excessive protein breakdown. For my clients, I tend to recommend that they get protein in within 90 minutes of training and within 90 minutes after training. Same thing with carbs. I like them to have carbohydrates from two different sources, usually one fructose-based and one glucose-based, so something like cereal and fruit or toast and jam with a little bit of quick digesting protein, whether that be from whole foods or a shake. Those things tend to work really well, and those are simple behaviors and simple habits.

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. Lastly, take your hydration seriously. It's really easy to forget just how important drinking water is, right? Especially when we're talking about all these different nutritional things like, well, what about calories? What about carbs? What about fats? What about proteins? What about

BCAAs? What about multivitamins? about creatine blah blah blah water always falls through the cracks but this is the lowest hanging fruit here water is going to help your muscles stay hydrated while you train it's going to help you recover from hard training and it's also really valuable if you're in a calorie deficit helping you feel fuller or more satiated i train in my garage which gets a little hot. So I supplement with electrolytes and I use Elemental Labs. They're a partner of the show. It's awesome. It costs like a dollar to add it to my water, but that helps me make sure that I'm hydrated when I'm training in the hot weather or if I'm going to be doing something like going to

the sauna, which is a lifestyle thing that's going to enhance my recovery. However, when you have a zoomed out view, you go, well, if I'm going to go to the sauna tonight and I'm going to train tomorrow morning, I definitely need to replenish the water I'm going to lose in the sauna because I don't want to be dehydrated for my morning workout. So getting your nutrition dialed in is extremely important and it's something that way too many people overlook. And the difference between getting a C and an A in your nutrition, if we're talking from the, you know, just basic grade scale here, is the difference between the physique you have right now and the physique you want. If you really want to develop your physique, whether it's building muscle or losing fat, you are going to get way more out of training training or I'm sorry, out of monitoring your nutrition than you probably will out of training.

And it's a damn shame to spend four to 10 hours a week in the gym, which a lot of people do, only to not take your nutrition seriously. You're really kneecapping your ability to make progress. And a lot of people are afraid to say that now. I've noticed that it's become really taboo to discuss just, you know, what it actually takes to drive physique change. I've noticed that it's become really taboo to discuss just, you know, what it actually takes to drive physique change. I think something that's important to acknowledge is that not everybody's that interested in physique change, which is totally fine. But if you really are like, man, I've been dying to get to this place and I'm approaching it with a healthy mindset, I'm not attaching all of my self-worth to it. I just really want to get shredded or I want to get lean or I want to build a fat ass or I want to build, you know, a killer back. That takes effort and that

effort is much more easily sustained if you're giving your body the fuel it needs or if you're trying to lose fat, you're not sabotaging yourself with subpar nutrition habits. Number four is take less supplements but take more of the right stuff. I just told you in that ad read early in the show what I take from Legion. I take the Genesis Greens. I take multivitamin. I take protein. I take creatine. And then I take supplemental electrolytes.

That's pretty much it. That's not a whole hell of a lot. That's five supplements. Most people tend to take more. And I actually saw a study the other day that was shared by Menno Henselmans, who's an awesome thought leader in our space, that basically concluded the longer you train, the less you take. Because what you end up doing is you end up realizing you're throwing all this money away

because none of the shit really works besides kind of the big stuff, right? Creatine is phenomenal. Having a protein powder on hand to help you hit your macros is phenomenal. Greens powders to help you get your micronutrients up if you struggle to eat vegetables, phenomenal. If you're trying to lose fat, you should just be eating more and more vegetables to increase your fiber intake, satiety, and micronutrient density in your diet because when calories are at a premium, it can be easy to become deficient in micronutrients. But if you're on a big, let's say, massing phase or

bulking phase, and you have a hard time getting enough calories in and eating vegetables makes it that much harder, maybe you reduce your vegetable intake and add a greens. Or maybe you travel a lot and you have a hard time getting the vegetables you need, so you have it around. But, you know, greens, creatine, multivitamin, protein powder on hand, all great. I keep supplemental electrolytes and fish oils on hand because I don't always eat a lot of cold water fatty fish in my diet. So supplemental omega-3s tend to be a really good option for me. And then lastly, this is one that I tend to recommend for women to just kind of help manage a lot of the symptoms of PMS, which I found can be pretty

difficult to buffer for some women when it comes to training, magnesium and melatonin and fish oil. I already mentioned fish oil, but those three are sometimes worth having on hand. There's quite a bit of literature about magnesium and melatonin's ability to mitigate the impact of PMS, or I should say the symptoms of PMS, reduce the symptoms. And those are just some things that might be worth considering for women who want to train at the highest level, given the hormonal disruption that's often associated with the different phases of the menstrual cycle.

If you're in your follicular phase, you're probably going to kick some ass. At least that's what I found. When estrogen's high, which is generally from the beginning of the follicular phase, which is menstruation, women tend to kick ass. Estrogen gets dumped on a lot as being a bad hormone, but it's really beneficial for both men and women with regards to training performance. Women are more sensitive to insulin. They tend to train really hard. They tend to have great, more stable moods, if you will, in this part of the menstrual cycle.

If you want to learn more about this, you can actually go back and listen to episode 19 with Lyle McDonald that I did on this very show. And then an episode that I did, gosh, I think it's 107 or 108 that I also did with Lyle talking about these things in particular. get to that luteal phase, things can get a little tricky and PMS tends to kick up around the back end of the cycle, right? Because PMS precipitates menstruation, which is day one of the cycle. So a lot of times when women get to that last phase or they're in that PMS range, it can be really hard to get to the gym and train hard or recover. And so having some things in your back pocket could be beneficial. However, one of the best things you can do is are some of the things I already outlined, which are remain hydrated, make sure you're getting your macro and micronutrition dialed in and do what you need to to recover. If you can only train hard during your follicular phase, like two to three weeks, let's say of the month, that's fine. If you totally kick some ass,

you can make some awesome gains. Even if that means you have to back off because perhaps you're somebody who deals with a little bit more intense symptoms when it comes to things like PMS. Lastly, we're going to talk about our fifth and final tip, which is finish what you freaking start. Stop buying programs, online coaching, training sessions, training packages packages gym memberships boot camp memberships and giving up even a bad program that you do to the best of your ability from start to finish is going to be so much better from jumping around and starting over from scratch the best gains come from compounding interest whether that be in investments whether that be in relationships or whether that be in the gym the longer you stick at something the better opportunity you have to make real progress. And when in doubt, when you're thinking about quitting,

when you're thinking about jumping around, think about what professional athletes do day in and day out, doing almost all of the same shit. Steph Curry probably shoots the ball one to 5,000 times a day from the same spots, from a lot of different spots, but from most of the same spots over and over and over and over and over again. Because repetition is what it takes to really get things done. Repetition is what it takes to learn things. Repetition in the weight room is what it takes to make progress. And even though it gets boring, hopping around to your next program is probably, like I've said before, kneecapping your gains more than you might want to admit and so stop looking back on. Oh, I wish I stuck with that Oh, I stopped. I wish I stuck with that. Uh

I actually stick with it, right? You don't want to look back and be like, oh my gosh I've done 12 programs this year for three weeks each and gotten fucking nowhere Or oh, yeah, I did this online coach and I did that online coach. That's not going to help. I had a conversation with somebody the other day that was like, hey man, I really love your approach. I'd like to work with you in an online coaching setting. I've had a lot of bad online coaches. I had four this year and none of them really worked for me. And the first thing I said to the guy was, if it was one, I wouldn't have said this, but it was four. And I said, you know, man, if you've had four coaches, it might be worth considering that maybe it's a you thing and not a them thing.

I know there's a lot of bad online fitness coaches out there. I won't deny that. However, be real with yourself. If you're getting in your own way, if you're not finishing what you start, if you're not bringing your best self to the table and you're looking for something new to kind of inspire you, I hate to break it to you. You're not going to get there. The toughest part of the program, like let's say it's female physique advanced and it's 10 weeks. The toughest part of that program

is going to be weeks three through six, right in the middle. You know, you got the first two weeks, you're pumped. Then it starts to get hard. You start to put a little weight on the bar. You're doing a lot of the same lifts because that's what it takes, right? I don't know if I'm going to stick it out. I'm going to quit. I'm going to move on to something else. That's where the gains are made. Once you get through that and you're like, okay, I'm in a rhythm.

I'm crushing it. I only have four weeks to go. You finish strong. If you've never started and finished a program, nothing is going to make you feel better and more confident than sticking with something for 10 to 12 weeks and being like, I totally kicked that thing's ass. I did it. When in doubt, when inspiration is lacking, double down on effort, double down on doing your best,

double down on your commitment to yourself and always remember your why. All right, guys, that will do it for today's episode of the podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in. Like I mentioned earlier, if you're hearing this, Female Physique Advanced is live on my website. If you are a listener to the pod, I want to make sure that I reward your guys' subscribership

and your listenership so you can use the code POD at checkout to save 15% on the launch of this new awesome program. I really appreciate every single one of you guys, and I couldn't do it without you. So thank you so much for tuning in, sharing my episodes, and continuing to subscribe to the podcast. Additionally, you'll notice in the podcast notes, I have a new section of the show known as Fix My Shit, and the Fix My Shit section is going to be launching on future episodes, future Q&As, and it's a really cool segment where you get the opportunity to tell me the program you're doing,

the nutrition you're doing, your goals. If you feel stuck and you're like, man, I don't know where to go from here. I feel like I'm off. I will fix your shit. Tell me what you want to accomplish. Tell me what you're doing right now. And I'm actually going to answer

your guys' exact specific questions, give you a totally like a total routine overhaul, a nutrition overhaul, break down the macros, break down the supplements to reward you guys, my listeners, you guys will literally be getting what would in essence be an online coaching consultation from me live over the air. If you want them to be anonymous, you can just leave the name out or put a fake name in. But these are going to be really cool educational opportunities for you if you're a fitness enthusiast or a coach to see how my brain works, to see how I break things down from start to finish. I think you guys will love

it. And so do pay attention because the Fix My Shit section is live in the show notes down below. So feel free to submit a question there. Thank you guys again for listening. Stay tuned for more.