Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 171: Q & A - Should You Get Lean Before Bulking, Pet-Peeves + MORE!

Episode Date: March 7, 2022

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Welcome into another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. As always, guys, it's your host Danny Matrenga. And in today's episode, we're doing a deep dive Q&A. I will be answering your questions. These are questions that I fielded over on my Instagram. My handle over there is at Danny Matrenga. You can head over there to check out my short form content, whether it's written content or video content, usually informative stuff in the fitness space. You might've found me through there, but you can also find me on Facebook. I have a Facebook page, Coach Danny Matranga CSCS, and you can follow my coaching company on Instagram as well at Core Coaching Method.

Speaking of Core Coaching Method, some big news in that space. We are getting ready to launch our app-based programming that is for people all over the world. You can train with me and with a team following progressive programming from your home or in the gym. That will be launching in April. On Monday, the last day of February, I signed a lease to lock down a location for my private training studio and physical therapy clinic that will be launching early May. So Sonoma County locals who are interested in personal training, semi-private group training, or physical therapy, please feel free to reach out to the Core Coaching Method page on Instagram or send an email to the attached email about

scheduling an appointment or getting in for whatever services you may need in advance of us opening. When the launch does occur, all of the booking stuff will be live, so you'll be able to take advantage of the services if you're local and you're looking for something a little bit more hands-on. As for those of you who are looking for something more remote, feel free to check in with the online coaching offerings over at corecoachingmethod.com. Just head over, click the coaching tab, and you can select either in-person training, that would again be for the studio launch, or you can pick online coaching to apply to work with me and my team from wherever you are in the world. All right, so without further ado, let's go ahead and get into some of these questions. I think there's some really good

ones here. The first one comes from underscore Valpha, and she asks, did you do any internships while in college? Tips for getting experience and net. So I'm not exactly sure what net means, but let's just talk about how I went about getting experience while I was in college for my career, specifically talking about the fitness industry. So what I did was semi-unique in that I did end up actually paying my way through school. So I paid for my own tuition instead of taking out student loans, which again is something that I think people are in different situations. So that might not be something you can do. Maybe it's something that you can do. I would recommend doing it if you can. work was so rigorous that I couldn't work. I think a lot of people who are in maybe more challenging majors or academically don't excel as much in their area of study, they might need a little bit more time, but I worked my way through school as a personal trainer. So when I went to school to learn about physiology, when I went to school to learn about chemistry, when I went to

school to learn anatomy, when I was taking these classes, I was taking them back to my clients and practicing on them, teaching them, communicating to them, explaining to them. And one of the best ways for me to study was to just review my study materials with my clients. So usually that looked a little different than what you might expect. I wasn't going over like study guides and stuff, but what I was doing was I was showing my clients like, hey, this is your serratus. This is what that muscle does. It originates from here. It inserts here. I was literally practicing on them and they loved it because it adds to the relationship. It's kind of fun. It's playful. Um, you know, I wasn't trying to blow their mind. I'd be like, Oh man, I just learned about this in class. This is what this muscle does. It's pretty cool. You know, not like trying to act cooler than

I was, but I got the opportunity to practice every single day, which felt like the ultimate cheat code in studying. It gave me the opportunity to understand like, Hey, is this really something I want to do academically? Like, do I want to, do I want to continue in this area of study? Something I think a lot of young people do is they study something academically, but it's very different when you get to doing it professionally. Um, and you exit the theoretical and you get into the practical. So that was a huge blessing. And that kind of acted as an internship. I had the opportunity to work also early on in my career doing camera work or in front of the camera work for a large fitness company who made a generous amount of fitness content. But a lot of what I

was doing was YouTube. And so this was when I was working as an independent personal trainer and mostly just making my money servicing sessions. So getting paid to do YouTube videos really forced me out of my comfort zone. And at first I didn't get paid. So that was something where I was like, Hey, cool. Like I'm learning. And then very quickly I found that I was pretty good at it. I had a little bit of a proclivity for it. So we started doing more and more videos. And that was a situation that was more of a job than an internship. But I learned a lot about that, or learned a lot through that process, I should say, that I use today. So those are two unique opportunities at different points in my life that I think really acted as non-traditional

modalities of learning. Um, and I would definitely recommend that. Okay. So this question comes from Sarah Anandaji and she asks, I'm really struggling to gain weight. I eat my three meals, snacks, but really hate shakes and meat. This is tough. Gaining weight can be really challenging, particularly if you're somebody that has a high NEAT, you burn a lot of additional calories, and maybe your appetite is a little on the smaller end. But I'm going to share two hacks with you as somebody who doesn't particularly love shakes either. There's a few snacks that I think are really good for gaining weight, and there's a few things that I think you can use in this situation in particular that are easy enough to implement. And they're actually

food items in a sense. So the first is to take the meats you're eating and opt for fattier options. So if you're already eating red meat in the form of like sirloin and chicken, and maybe you're eating fish, but it's like tilapia or white meat, switch to fattier options. So switch your fish over to higher fat options, like salmon, for example, those will bring some additional calories. Switch your red meat options over to something like ribeye, that's a little fattier if you can afford that, or just a fattier cut of red meat. You can do the same thing with chicken by switching to thigh, which is usually a little less expensive and tastes a little better. So you can eat the same volume of your proteins, opting for slightly fattier options. Now, yes, you will increase your intake of saturated fat, but if you're looking to gain

body fat, um, you know, I'm guessing that that aesthetic goal is probably a little bit more important than your saturated fat intake and maybe your associative cholesterol levels. But, but like, let's just call a spade a spade. If you're wanting to gain weight, you're going to have to make some sacrifices. So I think switching to fattier meat is a really good first option. A couple of snacks I really like that I think are high in calories and can also have a little bit of extra protein that are kind of nice are things like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and trail mix. I find that trail mix with a little bit of fruit, a little bit of M&Ms and some nuts, yes, it does have quite a few calories, but that's the point

Um, it has a lot of fat a lot of carbs a little bit of protein I like the little bit of extra protein and then on the sandwich side I like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and my good friend jordan lips He he says something to the tune of like yeah bulking's hard But not when you like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or yeah, it's hard to eat But nobody struggles to eat like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or yeah, it's hard to eat, but nobody struggles to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And I always felt like that was kind of right. Like I could literally always eat one. I love the taste and then they go down super easy. And unless you're eating like raw peanut butter and preserves on Ezekiel bread, it's not

as filling as like, you know, just a typical peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And so opting for something like that can be a really good way to get some additional calories in to help with weight gain. And so when you think about weight gain, we're talking about consuming more calories than our total daily energy expenditure. So we're eating above our maintenance. And the easiest way to do that usually is by increasing our intake of carbohydrate and increasing our intake of fats. Because if we increase our intake of protein, we increase our protein, our intake of carbohydrate and increasing our intake of fats. Because if we increase our intake of protein, we increase our intake of things like fruits and vegetables, they're very filling and they don't always have a lot of calories. So we're swapping our proteins over to higher fat, higher calorie options.

We're incorporating things that are high calorie snacks that might also yield some protein. You can include the occasional snack as well. If you like a snack food or a treat, you can definitely look to include those things. Like, you know, Rich Piana, the late great Rich Piana would always have like a pint of Ben and Jerry's before bed. That was like a signature thing. But I think it's funny because, you know, when you're bulking, a lot of people have a tendency to want to eat as healthfully as possible. And it's really hard to gain weight when you only eat, quote unquote, clean foods. So if you can identify whatever your Ben and Jerry's might be, that one thing that you like, and you can look to include that while you're on your road to adding a little extra

weight to your frame, that's probably a good way to have a little variety, have something you like. And it's a time where you can, quote unquote, get away with it. So to me, that makes a lot of sense. And then the last thing I always recommend, I'm not a huge shake guy, but much like peanut butter and jelly, I don't know too many people that hate a good fruit smoothie. Like I love fruit smoothies, particularly things like berries. Like I love mixed berry smoothies where you have apple juice base with orange juice base with blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, a little bit of banana. I love that. Or then

something more tropical where it's like pineapple juice base with frozen pineapple, frozen mango, frozen papaya, maybe some strawberries. Those are like my two favorite kinds of smoothies. Super simple. I have yet to meet a person who did not enjoy a smoothie and much like a shake, they go down pretty easy because they're blended and pulverized. But if you're not a fan of the whey protein taste or the fact that a lot of the flavors are kind of dairy-like or creamy and thick in that way and you prefer something that's a little more fruity, like maybe you're somebody that likes sorbet more than ice cream, for example. I tend to fall into that category too. I'm not a huge eater of dairy desserts just because I find them to be very rich and oftentimes

not as appetizing as others. So I'll opt for more fruit flavored things in those instances. And just to put it in perspective, like a smoothie with a little bit of added like avocado, you can always add something like that that doesn't taste like much, a little bit of peanut butter, a little bit of whole fat yogurt, that can really, really ramp up the calories. So that's a super easy, efficient way that you can increase your caloric intake by just changing some of the foods you eat, adding a couple different snacks, and maybe finding a fruit smoothie that you like that won't just leave you feeling overly stuffed. Okay. This question comes from Susan Alkner. Susan Alker. Susan Alker asks, simple carbs only after training. And so my short answer here is no, you can have simple carbs

whenever you want. A simple carb is a carb that is mostly in the form of simple sugars. There aren't a lot of associated fibers. So these carbohydrates are usually mono and disaccharides. They're not polysaccharides, so they're not considered very starchy. And so things like white rice, rice krispies, table sugar, juice, lactose. These are all simple sugars or simple sugars are oftentimes occurring in these products. And those would be simple carbs. More refined carbs tend to be in this category too, most often times. Things like whole grain, most often times. Things like whole grain, steel cut oats, quinoa, which is a seed, but brown rice. These things oftentimes are more complex. Sweet potatoes, your tubers, right? These are more complex carbs. So the question here is, should we have these carbs, these simple carbs only after

training? And I think that's the best time for them because they tend to be quite insulinemic in that they will raise your insulin, which is never a bad thing out of context. Some people will say it's quite bad to have your insulin up all the time. I shouldn't say it's never a bad thing. It isn't always a bad thing is what I meant to say. So you have a situation where you have a temporary increase in your insulin from eating simple sugars. This will happen usually from eating more simple carbohydrates. And it's not always the case how people respond and the amount of insulin people release varies a lot based on their genetics, the type of food, their individual glucose response, or their individual insulin response.

But for most people, the simpler the carbohydrate, the more likely for a high insulin response. Because insulin's primary job is to take sugar and get it out of the bloodstream and into working tissue or take it where it needs to go. So it will elevate in the presence of simple sugars. And so that's actually a good thing after your training. Insulin is protein sparing. It can help with nutrient transportation

because it opens the glute floor pathway on your cells to allow things to come in and out of there, not just the blood sugar, like even creatine, right? So having a little bit after your workout is a really good idea to help you replenish glycogen. You probably don't deplete enough of that to be super concerned about it, but it helps. It can raise your insulin, which helps prevent excessive muscle protein breakdown, and it might help with nutrient partitioning or getting nutrients where they need to go in the body, which are all really good reasons, in my opinion, to consider having them then. But does that mean you can't enjoy sugar or simple carbs throughout the day? Absolutely not. You definitely can. From a body composition standpoint, as long as your macros

equal out, you can have them whenever you want. But from a health standpoint, constantly spiking your insulin is a good way to create some level of insulin resistance. So you might be a little bit more mindful of when you get them in across the day and try to focus them around your workout, but it's not a bad thing if you have them at different times a day. 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 question comes from Grace Jane 0710. She says, pill versus powder creatine. Is one better than the other? Is it okay to take either one? Okay. So creatine, again, you've heard me talk about it a million times here on the podcast, is an amino acid derivative of arginine glycine or lysine and methionine. So it's not a hormone. It is a powdered amino acid derivative. Our body makes quite a bit of it on its own. And usually if you're active, you're going to be able to get away and store a little bit more, which will help you perform a little bit better. So you can supplement to kind of fuel your tank and top things off, if you will. You use it in the brain, we're just beginning to understand that, but it's really

exciting emerging literature that has a lot of people really hopeful about how creatine can improve people's lives. So it's worth taking. It's non-hormonal and it comes in a powder. And because it comes in a powder, you don't necessarily have to worry about how it's stored. Like most amino acids, it's fine in a powdered form. It's going to survive. It's going to have a great shelf life. It's going to have great bioavailability in a powdered form. Because it's powdered, when you put it in a capsule,

all you're doing is putting that powder into a capsule. So there's really no difference in taking it in powdered form or capsule form, assuming it's the same type of creatine. If you're like, you know, taking powdered creatine monohydrate and capsule form creatine hydrochloride, you're going to need to probably make sure that those dosages line up. But at the end of the day, creatine is creatine, monohydrate works best. So I would just take the monohydrate 99 times out of 100. And whichever of those two modalities works best for you. Creatine doesn't fully absorb in water.

It can oftentimes be a little gritty, which I've noticed some people absolutely despise. And so if you're somebody who doesn't like a little bit of chalkiness at the bottom of your mix, pills might be better. If you're somebody who likes to just pound things down and get it over with, powders might be better because five milligrams, or I'm sorry, five grams, the daily dose of creatine, it means five one gram capsules or one five gram capsule. And a five gram capsule is like monstrosity. So, you know, it's probably in your best interest to just pick one and take it because it's delivering the same thing in two very similar vehicles. The powder is

getting where it needs to get to. It's just either breaking down out of the capsule or it's already in the water. This question comes from Soph Schrader. She asks, what are some tricep exercises that aren't rope pushdowns and aren't overhead extensions? So for those of you who don't know, like my arms perpetually have been a struggle for me to develop because I'm hypermobile, which means for the best way to describe this would be like, it shows up as me being like double jointed. So if you know somebody who's double jointed, oftentimes that person will have some joint hypermobility. And I have a lot of hypermobility in my elbows. And so a lot of training with hard lockouts, which at the time I didn't realize, I thought locking everything out was really good.

And for 99.9% of people it is. But if if you are hyper mobile at the elbow joint and at the top of every rep of your bench press, you're hyper extending your elbows and you're throwing a lot with like baseball and sports like that, where there's a lot of stress on the elbow. The other way, like I got to the end of my high school athletic career and my elbows were so trashed, I couldn't really do a lot of direct arm or shoulder training without pain. So I spent many, many years trying to get creative and find ways to comfortably train arms. And once I finally settled on some things I really liked, it became quite easy for me to build up the muscles around those joints. And now my elbows feel better than ever.

So I know a number of different bicep and tricep exercises that might be applicable for your situation. But let's first talk about the rope extension and the dumbbell overhead extension. So the rope extension is going to be done on a cable holding a rope. Obviously, you can do that same movement with a V-bar or a straight bar. I do like the rope the most, but personally, my favorite variation of this type of extension is the cross body tricep extension that you'll do with a dual cable. So you use a free motion or any other manufacturer dual cable where the arms move up and down in and out. They move in those different planes. You take that machine and you put both of the handles all the way up at the top,

high above your head. Then what you do is you grab the right pulley with the left arm and the left pulley with the right arm, crossing them over each other and making an X so that the lines on the cable line up perfectly with your triceps. Instead of pinning your elbows to your side, you let them kind of sit out a little bit where they naturally would sit if you're just resting.

And then you make an X as you drive the cables away from your body, flexing the triceps hard. That's my favorite way to do that. And so tricep exercises done in that plane are going to train different heads of the tricep differently than something like the dumbbell overhead extension, where the shoulder is in the flexed position. So some alternatives for that one would be things like skull crushers, right? That shoulder is in extension or a flexion, sorry. It's up above the head. The overhead rope extension, the cross overhead rope extension, which is basically

overhead cable extension, which is basically the one I described doing previously, but you're doing this now overhead, almost like a skull crusher. Those tend to be pretty good. Skull crushers were really hard on my elbows, particularly with a barbell or an easy bar. So my favorite way to do the skull crusher is actually, and you'll probably think this is kind of weird, is with dumbbells or even on a cable where I'll take the decline bench all the way over to the cable and do them on a cable, super inefficient. And I, like I said, some of you guys might think that's weird or a waste of time, but I really tried everything. Dips are great. Close grip bench press is great. Those are some compound movements that are going to work other muscles. They're a little less isolated, but

they're also really going to challenge the triceps. I like tricep kickbacks if you perform them by really keeping the elbows up high But they're not the best because you really only get a lot of stretch in that straight or stress in that shortened position But that's a pretty good list of different tricep exercises so dips close grip bench various forms of skull crushers um Not the biggest monstrous fan of of kickbacks and bench dips, but I think kickbacks are way better than bench dips. But if you're training with dumbbells, you're probably going

to be limited to kickbacks, overhead extensions, and skull crushers. But I definitely like that the kickback might help keep the shoulder in extension a little bit. So that could be kind of a unique benefit there. And it does show up sometimes in my programming. This one is from Instagram, but this one's from Heidi Smiles. She says, not a cue, but I just started female physique and absolutely loving it. Thanks for the great program. Thanks, Heidi. That's an awesome review. I really appreciate that. If you're interested in trying any of my programs, you guys can head over to www.corecoachingmethod.com, click the programs tab, female physique one and female physique two are two very challenging

physique focused bodybuilding programs that do not have to be done in sequence. I just named them poorly. One is a little bit different in terms of like, okay, it emphasizes these movements and two emphasizes these movements and two emphasizes these movements, but they're both very good, effective hypertrophy program specifically for helping women develop the glutes, hamstrings, back and shoulders. I have a lot of people who follow me that kind of fit neatly into the category of I'm a woman. These are the muscles I want to develop. This is the training style I like. So those are there. There's also foundations, which is like my interpretation of CrossFit that doesn't suck. It's like a functional, if you will, functional cardiovascular, you know, there's cardio, there's a lot of

stability work, there's a lot of mobility work, there's a lot of strength work, there's some selective hypertrophy work. If you care about how your body looks, moves, and feels, but you really like to focus on how it feels and how it moves, that's a good one for you. And then there's also Power Build, which is a bodybuilding slash power lifting focused program. I'm also, like I said earlier in the podcast, launching the apps very soon. So stay tuned. I'll have pretty much all of your programming needs met, but I do appreciate the awesome reviews of female physique. This question comes from Peta Cardenas. I just bought the legion supplement, the greens legions green supplement. What do you typically drink it with? Just curious.

So the legions green, the legion green supplement is like my go-to green supplement because it contains three grams of reishi. I don't always eat a lot of vegetables. I do get a lot of fruit in, so I get some fiber that way, but I tend to take the greens because it's a really affordable way to get reishi. And I like that it has spirulina as well as some other things, but in full honest transparency, it's not the best tasting. So mixing it with something tends to be a good option. And I usually mix it in the morning with my chocolate whey protein. This question comes from peachy.love. She asks, do I have to get lean before I go into a calorie surplus for muscle gain? And my answer to this question is fairly simple in that not necessarily, but there are some high level reasons that that might make sense for

you. The first is that when you have additional body fat, the aromatization of testosterone to estrogen, meaning the conversion of testosterone to estrogen, will likely be higher because that occurs in the fat cell. And so the idea of getting lean first usually comes from or is parroted by people who think that you should optimize that hormone profile. Get leaner, reduce body fat, you'll likely have higher total test, you'll likely have higher total test, you'll likely have less aromatization, and more of what you gain will be lean. But I don't necessarily know how big of a deal that's going to be unless you have quite a bit of body fat. If you have a decent amount of body fat, it might be worth getting leaner first and trying to bulk

from a leaner place. It also might just generally be better to start off with less body fat so that you can kind of more accurately gauge how your physique is developing along the way, because it's probably really hard to start with a lot of body fat and then bare bulk or just like dirty bulk your way to gaining a ton of muscle because you're not going to notice your physique changing as much given the fact that you already have a considerable amount of body fat. And it'll probably be pretty hard to parse out how much muscle you're gaining. You'll be reliant on the scale to just like assess total gain in weight. And you won't be able to really know, okay, am I gaining a lot

of lean tissue or am I just gaining more fat? And I think from a mentality standpoint, that might be challenging. So I would recommend getting leaner before bulking. If you have a little bit of body fat to lose, I think it might just make things easier. This question is from Miranda Overland. She asks, what's my biggest pet peeve in the current fitness industry? And I think I would have to say there's two. One is trainers who are trying too hard to impress other trainers and not trying hard enough to take good care of their clients or to just take good care of the industry in general. This is a mistake that I made early in my career. So as to kind of get clout and to get respect from your peers, when you should be focusing

on taking good care of your clients, creating content that resonates with your clients and your potential clients and with your peers and coworkers and with your industry counterparts, not necessarily content that makes people think you're smart. If you do a good job of creating good content,

I think more coaches would appreciate your ability to reach people looking to change than to reach them. And I definitely don't like people making content that just really shits on each on other people. Like even the most annoying people in our industry, like it's so easy for me to like pick on these quote unquote influencers who know nothing about fitness. Really. They just have nice bodies and they're so full of shit and it's so Obvious that they're just fucking greedy But you know, I don't really want to spend my time being negative and I think that there's a lot of people Their whole shtick is like i'm just negative about everything. I don't really create content that's positive or helpful I just create content that shits on other people

Uh, I don't like people that just create content that's like self-serving, but that's up to them too. So it's like, I think really what it is, is trainers trying to sound too smart, not caring enough about their clients. Instead, they're more focused on other people's opinions, which I see a lot. And another big one would be just like people who have obvious body augmentation, but they don't disclose that and they sell like nutrition and training protocols promising that you can look like them when they've had like a Brazilian butt lift. I think that's really disingenuous. All right, you guys,

thank you so much for tuning into that episode. I really appreciate your subscribership and you listening. If you want to help the podcast grow, you can do me a huge favor by leaving a five-star rating and review on iTunes or Spotify. It really helps more people find the podcast and it's the most organic way to drive growth. Thanks so much for tuning in and I'll catch you on the next one.