Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 116: PCOS, Bodyweight Leg Training, Multi-Vitamins + More!

Episode Date: August 11, 2021

In this episode, coach Danny answers your questions about PCOS, leg training at home with minimal equipment, multi-vitamins + more.---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 Coach Danny to Fix Your S*** (training, nutrition, lifestyle, etc) fill the form HERE for a chance to have your current approach reviewed live on the show. 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 another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. As always, I am your host, Coach Danny Matranga, and today's episode is going to be a Q&A episode. I'm going to be fielding some of your questions. We have some phenomenal questions ranging from PCOS, polycystic ovary syndrome, talking a little bit about reverse dieting, as well as things like when to do your cardio. So we've got some other questions thrown into the mix. Those are kind of the big heavy hitters, the ones I'm really excited to talk about. And I think you guys will enjoy those tremendously, as well as a little bit about vitamins and ab training. So a really diverse episode today. We're going to dive into a lot of different fitness topics.

But these things are questions I get quite a bit about, so I'm excited to answer them today. Before I do though, I want to plug my coaching company, Core Coaching Method. You can check Core Coaching Method out at corecoachingmethod.com and see all of the different offerings we have from online coaching, in-person coaching, Zoom coaching, telehealth, physical therapy, macro consultations, programming consultations, and even fitness business consultations for trainers and entrepreneurs who are looking to kind of differentiate themselves in a very saturated market. So regardless of what it is that you're looking for on your health and fitness journey, me and my team over at Core Coaching Method would love to help you get there. And it's an extension of kind of what I do here on the podcast. If you like the delivery I have here, if you like the philosophies I share, these are the things that are baked into the coaching

experience over at Core Coaching Method. So head over there, check that out. It's a great way to support me and a fantastic way to support the show. Without further ado, let's get into our first question. And this one comes from Adria Leza, and she asks, best lower body exercises if I have little weight available and I'm working out from home. So this is something I have quite a bit of experience with as a coach, not so much as a client or as a practitioner, as a lifter, let's say, um, why I have a garage gym. And so that is completely outfitted with everything I would need for leg training, but in coaching, particularly across the pandemic throughout the pandemic. And even now, as many people have adjusted the way that they train, many people are still training from home.

Um, when you're taking care of people's programming and they're working out at home with minimal equipment, it's hard, but it's particularly hard to train big lower body muscles that are quite strong with things just like body weight. But I've done so many of these programs and I've written them for so many clients across different fitness levels

that I have a really good idea of what you can do at home with just small dumbbells and the weight of your own body to really develop your lower half. The first thing we want to do is we want to maximize our utilization of unilateral exercises. So what are unilateral exercises, right? Generally speaking, they're exercises where one side of the body is working independently. Or in this case, we're doing things like lunges, single leg hip thrusts, and single leg RDLs, right? Those are all movements that are compound in nature, right? They're training multiple joints. But when we

split the body up and train it left side versus right side, or in a unilateral fashion, right? An example of a bilateral exercise might be a barbell bench press or a barbell squat, right? An example of a bilateral exercise might be a barbell bench press or a barbell squat, right? Where both sides are working simultaneously. So unilateral exercises are a big time, big time arrow in your quiver when it comes to training at home with minimal equipment. Why? Well, a Bulgarian split squat is effectively squatting the same amount of weight you would be doing during a bodyweight split squat. Oh boy, a bodyweight split squat. Say that five times fast. But seriously, a Bulgarian split squat done with bodyweight is basically the same movement as a bodyweight squat.

The only difference is you're moving the same weight with basically one leg by positioning that back leg out of the equation and using it mostly for stability. So your weight, your bodyweight goes a lot further when you train in a unilateral fashion. Things like walking lunges, reverse lunges, side lunges, Cossack squats, single leg hip thrusts, single leg RDLs are very effective even with dumbbells that range into the 10 to 20 pound range. And without dumbbells, you can still do things like gliding hamstring curls, walking lunges for distance, Bulgarian split squats, single leg RDLs, et cetera. There are quite a few things. Side planks are another great example of an exercise

that's body weight that works the lower body. It works the glutes quite a bit, particularly things like side planks with hip abduction. You can get a band and increase the amount of band work you do, but that again is most definitely inferior to high tension resistance training. But again, we're not particularly looking at optimizing here. We're looking at optimizing the situation. And so another thing you might consider is something like a TRX because that's a fantastic supplement to your upper body training. When we talk about things like rowing, face pulls, T-flies, Y-flies,

getting able to train the delts and the back stuff that's a little bit tricky to train with body weight, that's a phenomenal tool. So you leverage your unilateral exercises, lunge like crazy. You're going to have to do a lot of single leg hip thrusts, hip bridges, hamstring sliders, Nordic ham curls. There are things that you can do with your body weight to develop your lower body. It's just a little bit more challenging, in my opinion, than doing body weight upper body work because those muscles are just so strong and able to overcome the resistance that your body weight provides. Okay, next question is from At R Sellers, and he asks, what ab exercises or ab workouts

do you suggest? And so the first thing I like to do whenever I talk about the abs or ab training is get very clear here. The abs are your six pack, your rectus abdominis. Your core is an entire group of muscles in your midsection from your abs, your rectus abdominis, your obliques, your transverse abdominis, your glutes, your glute med, your lower lat. There's all these muscles that are involved in your core. And when we talk about ab workouts, we might be talking about things like sit-ups, crunches, things that produce spinal flexion that train the rectus abdominis. But when we talk about core training, we're talking about something different entirely. What we need to be focusing on with core training is flexion of the core, right? Bringing the pelvis

closer to the rib cage, anti-extension exercises where we create rigidity and tension like planks, rotational exercises like med ball throws or wood chops, anti-rotational exercises like the pale off press, and some type of what I would describe as flexion resistant exercises, particularly lateral flexion, like a farmer's carry or something even like an ab wheel. So there's so many different things that we want to incorporate when we're talking about high quality core training. And I think what it really comes down to is how much time do you have? How much bang for your buck are you looking to get? If you want to really prioritize your core training and do it

every day, you could pick a movement that creates tension or rigidity, like a plank or a peel-off press, a movement that produces force, like a med ball throw or a med ball side toss, and a movement that is done close to failure, like a Russian twist, a decline crunch, a variety of different movements, hanging leg raises. You know what I mean? Like, you can train your core for a variety of its functions in a short amount of time. You can end every workout with a quick two-round circuit of three core exercises. If you do a lot of squatting, lunging, deadlifting, you probably work a lot of your core already, but supplemental core work never hurts. But I tend to recommend when you're selecting core exercises, picking from those

categories. Some of the ones I enjoy quite a bit. I like cable crunches and cross body cable crunches. I like hanging leg raises. I like side planks and I like side planks with hip abductions. I like crunches on a Swiss ball. I like stir the pot on a Swiss ball. I like pay love press with a cable. I like standing. I like standing with the ball up against the wall and pushing into the ball, almost like a standing force producing rotation against something that's not going to rotate. I love my med ball throws, my med ball tosses. So those are kind of the laundry list that I go through. I also really like the ab wheel, okay? So those are some of the better exercises, I would say, for training your core.

Everybody's different. Everybody has different goals. Everybody has different time frames, but I like to select from those things when we talk about good core workouts. If we're just talking about the rectus abdominis, cable crunches, decline crunches, cross-body cable crunches,

Swiss ball or exercise ball crunches tend to be my go-to. Okay. So into one of our more premier questions, if you will, something I'm very excited to talk about from at baby got was sad back. Baby got was at back. Okay. Will your programs work for women with PCOS? So first let's talk about PCOS. PCOS is polycystic ovary syndrome. And this is a metabolic type of condition that mostly you're going to find in exclusively going to find in women. Right. But I think it's important to acknowledge that not all people with PCOS have ovarian cysts or multiple ovarian cysts, right? There are different diagnostic criterion, things like testosterone levels, insulin sensitivity, ovarian cysts, okay? All in that criterion, you don't need to present with all of them.

The prevalence of diagnosis of PCOS has increased quite a bit in recent years as it's become more popular and I think more people are on the lookout for it. When I say more popular, I should say more mainstream. When you're making nutritional considerations for PCOS women, one of the things you want to consider is that insulin resistance or that friction around the production of insulin and that desensitization that tends to occur. And so one of the things you can do is attempt to diet with a lower carbohydrate approach, prioritizing fats and proteins in the diet. Beyond that, whenever you have any form of insulin resistance, resistance training tends to be a really good intervention. Whether you have diabetes or some type of

metabolic syndrome that's influencing your insulin sensitivity, training is really good for that. Resistance training upregulates something called GLUT4, which helps pull sugar out of the blood stream and into working tissue. And it plays a big role in helping to manage your blood sugar. So all of my programs are resistance training based, which shouldn't surprise any of you. And they're all pretty high frequency, both of which are really, really well aligned with what I would make as far as a recommendation for a PCOS client. The clients who I'm working with right now who are PCOS are on a low to moderate carb approach with a lot of protein, a lot of vegetables, healthy fats, aiming for quite a bit of training between four to six days a week, keeping sessions and stressors a little bit shorter than, you know,

some of my clients who are only training three or four days a week, adding in supplemental cardio in the form of walks, trying to make movement a really big piece of the equation. PCOS women respond the same with regards to energy balance, right? It's still about a deficit if you want to lose fat, but it's a little bit trickier. And so I find that that's an approach that works really well. And all of my programs are kind of aligned with that, right? Particularly female physique and female physique to advanced. Those two programs are both higher frequency. They train a lot of the larger muscle groups, particularly the legs and back. A lot of what you might want to do if you were trying to get the exercise related benefits or I should say resistance training benefits for PCOS

but also for weight loss and a lot of people who come to me with PCOS are looking to lose weight and so this is an approach that I think works really really well. So I would say that all of my programs foundations and power build include would be great. Female physique, female physique too also great but what you do with your nutrition matters. For most people working with PCOS, I might recommend coaching just as a means of, hey, let's see how you can help me with my exercise and how we can work together to structure my nutrition to get the most out of what it is that I'm doing.

And then going from there. The program isn't made specifically for people with PCOS, but you could definitely take it and run. 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 is a great question from Dodie. She says, when weight training, should I do cardio before, after, or on its own? So let's go ahead and outline what it is

we're talking about when we're talking about cardiovascular training. So we'll talk about four types of cardio here. Low intensity steady state cardio like walking, moderate intensity cardio like jogging, HIIT training, which would be some form of sprint or high intensity followed by recovery, and just let's say sprint training or really high-paced fast training. I think you can do low intensity exercise before or after your training. Low intensity aerobic exercise before or after your training with no oil effects. I think moderate-intensity aerobic training is best positioned post-resistance training or as a brief warm-up. So if you're going to do a five- to eight-minute cardio warm-up, which is what I tend to recommend

before you move into your tissue prep and your dynamic warm-up, again, that's all dependent on how much time you have. But I would say you could push it a little bit there if you kept the session short enough that the fatigue generated wouldn't interfere with your ability to lift weights, which is harder for some people than others. But I definitely think that you want to position ideally, or after I train my upper body. Never before I train my upper body, never before or after I train my lower body. It's just too much fatigue there to really get a lot out of the hit session. If you had to do it after a leg day would be best compared to before a leg day, but ideally on its own day or after an upper body day.

And as for sprinting, sprinting or sprint training is hard and it's hard to recover from. And so this isn't something that you can just do whenever you feel like it if you're doing real sprint training. Running sprints, running hills, doing a lot of the things that people do, you know, because they're challenging and they think they might have some benefit towards fat loss are extremely fatiguing. And so sprint training should be done as its own day and almost every single application. You could do sprint training followed by low level upper body training. I wouldn't do sprint

training followed by lower body leg training or low volume leg training. I would never do sprint training after leg training. I would try to keep it on its own day. And so just to review that, low intensity aerobics like walking can be done before or after training. Things like running or jogging can be done before training in small quantities, but are best done after training on upper body sessions. HIIT training, things where we're doing a high amount of, you know, high volume followed by short rest, high volume, short rest, or I should say high output, short rest, high output, short rest after upper body training or on its own day.

Sprints always on their own day. To me, those things seem fair, they seem reasonable, and they seem very practical. Remember, cardio is valuable for your aerobic health, but as far as fat loss is concerned, it all comes down to a calorie deficit. So if you're doing a bunch of cardio in an effort to try to off-put or offset some poor eating decisions in its high intensity, it might actually interfere with your ability to create muscle-building adaptations in the gym. So always look at your nutrition first before you start piling on a ton of arduous, high-intensity cardio. This question comes from Kieran Young Pro, and she says, what's your views on multivitamins? So I've always operated out of the space that you should take as few supplements as possible.

And when I recommend supplements, I tend to recommend protein, fish oil, multivitamins, greens, powder, and creatine. I split those up into different categories. Protein, I think of as a food and something that you keep on the back burner in case you're low on protein. Greens, powders, and multivitamins I look at as kind of an insurance policy against missing your micronutrients for the day. Creatine is a performance-enhancing supplement, and fish oil is something that I look at as a longevity slash recovery supplement. Now, when we look at those covering your basis supplements,

like greens and multivitamins, there's two things we have to acknowledge. One, you can get all of those nutrients from a healthy diet. Two, not all of these products are created equal. I want to get that out there because that's truly important to acknowledge. They will not replace getting nutrients from whole foods. It is still of utmost importance that you get your macronutrition from whole foods and multivitamins don't support macronutrition. We're talking about carbs, proteins, and fats. That being said, I think there are high quality multivitamins that are extremely inexpensive that would cost something between 10 and 20 cents per day to supplement with. And you'd cover all your bases nutritionally, right? If you already eat a healthy diet or a

nutritious diet, you probably don't have too many bases to cover. But for most health and fitness enthusiasts, a little bit of an insurance policy always feels good. And there are some vitamins that if you are deficient in them added it, you might notice an acute impact, right? Meaning like, ooh, I'm feeling a little funky today because I'm deficient in a really important nutrient, and maybe I didn't get it because I was traveling today and nothing I ate had vitamin B or C in it. Speaking purely hypothetically here, but you know, they're not too expensive. Some of them have some nice additions, right? Like you might find things like a good multi-mineral complex.

You might find things like ashwagandha. There's various different, let's call it, entry points for multivitamin supplementation. But I find that for most people, they're not particularly expensive to take every day. And in many cases, they're worth taking. So I tend to recommend them. They will not save you from making bad food

decisions. And I think it's important to reiterate that as much as possible. All right. This question comes from amac402. She says, reverse dieting, general thoughts. Can you keep reverse dieting once you're back to maintenance? So let's talk about what a reverse diet is. A reverse diet is a gradual introduction of calories after you've been at a deficit for a considerable amount of time with the goal of working your way back to maintenance and gaining as little body fat as possible.

Who should reverse diet? People who have a hard time implementing a lot of food after a deficit, people who psychologically struggle with the idea of gaining body fat. Who should not try a reverse diet? People who are experiencing relative energy deficiency syndrome, or they've lost their period or menstrual cycle from dieting too hard, people

who are having a terrible relationship with food and training and constantly hungry, constantly cold, people who are sick of being in a deficit for as long as they've been in it. Psychologically, it's causing anxiety and stress. So there are two options when you leave a deficit. One of them, well, there are three. One of them is reverse diet back to maintenance. The other is just go back to maintenance. And the third is who gives a fuck, just binge, come on court, eat whatever you want. I tend to recommend more often than not just going right back to maintenance. For most people, particularly women, I think that offsets the negative aspects of a calorie deficit much more quickly. And while there might be a small bit of increased fat gain,

it's usually negligible compared to reverse dieting. Now, as for the question of, can you keep reverse dieting once you're back at maintenance? A lot of people speculate that if you reverse diet up to maintenance and you slowly add in more calories, eventually what will happen is you'll reach a place where you can consume as many calories as you'd like. Like reverse dieting your metabolism to infinity. And a lot of influencers will sell this kind of physiology. I don't know how much truth there is to this. I don't think that you can

slowly incrementally work up your total daily energy expenditure by just reverse dieting forever. Look, oh, my maintenance is 2100 and I got up to 2100 and then I went to 22 and then my maintenance went up to 22 and I reverse dieted my way to like 5,000 calories. A lot of women would sell that. A lot of women would communicate that and that their programs do this, that their coaching does this, elevate your metabolism, speed up your metabolism. I saw that a lot more being pushed by female coaches towards female clients, potential female clients. I don't know if that's entirely true. What I will say is you can definitely elevate your total daily energy expenditure when you start exercising and you start feeding yourself more. And I don't know

where the point is at which that stops happening, but I don't think you can reverse diet to infinity. As I like to say, I think that's a little bit silly. Um, I don't think that makes a lot of sense. Okay. Last question comes from Meg Suarez. She says tips on letting your trainer go. Once you've achieved your goals and confidence in the gym, I would keep it really simple. I would say, hey, you know, I've really enjoyed our training together. I feel extremely confident and that I can use the machines, the weights and the various tools in the gym to help me continue down my path. I am extremely confident now and I owe you a debt of gratitude and I'd love to catch up with you in the future if I need more help on something, but I'd like to practice my self-sufficiency and try this on my own. It's a very easy way

to kind of approach that conversation. It doesn't make it personal. Trainers have clients leave them all the time. They should handle it like professionals. And that's really all there is to it. You guys, thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. If you enjoyed it, do me a favor, share it to your Instagram story, tag me in it so I can say thank you. If you have two minutes and you're listening on iTunes, leave me a five-star rating and review. Just go to the podcast page, swipe all the way down to the bottom, leave a written review, put five stars. It helps me out a lot. Reviews are how people find the podcast and how iTunes looks favorably from above down on podcasts like mine. For those of you who listen on Spotify,

just keep sharing, make sure you're subscribed. Every bit helps. Podcast downloads have reached an all-time high for me this month, and I'm really happy about it. I can't wait to keep sharing my message with people and help people live healthier lives where they perform and look as good as they could ever want. Thanks again so much for tuning in,

and I can't wait to see you guys soon. Well, not see you, but I can't wait for you guys to listen to me again soon. In your car, on your walks with your dog, wherever you are, thanks for listening. Have a good one.