Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 173: The Ten Biggest Mistakes Women Make When Training

Episode Date: March 14, 2022

Here they are!Thinking that training “like a man” will “turn them into a man”Doing too much intense cardio before resistance training Relying heavily on band workDoing too much high volume work BEFORE your heavy setsNever pushing for strength PR’sNever pushing for volume PR’sBeing afraid of chest and arm trainingSpending too much time on core trainingDoing too many leg training sessionsTraining 6-7 days/weekSUPPORT THE SHOW:There is NOTHING more valuable to a podcast than leaving a written review and 5-Star Rating. Please consider taking 1-2 minutes to do that HERE.You can also leave a review on SPOTIFY!OUR PARTNERS:Legion Supplements (protein, creatine, + more!), Shop (DANNY) HERE!Get Your FREE LMNT Electrolytes HERE! Care for YOUR Gut, Heart and Skin with SEED Symbiotic (save with “DANNY15)  HERE!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.

Welcome in everybody to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. As always, I'm your host, Danny Matranga. And in today's episode, we're going to unpack 10 of the biggest training mistakes I see that tend to be most prevalent amongst female trainees. fueled by misinformation, misconception, and just a general kind of perpetuation of the myths and mythology around how women should train, how women's bodies are different, and just kind of the crappy, unfortunate space that is the predatory fitness industrial complex. Women tend to spend more money on fitness products, weight loss products, diet products than men do. So, so much of what they're bombarded with in media and when advertising is entirely, you know, lacking factual basis and oftentimes is complete hogwash. So what I would like to do is slowly work through 10 things that I think are holding women back when it comes to their training. And these are 10 fairly prevalent mistakes. It's not uncommon for men to make similar mistakes, but having worked with a variety of different sexes for over a decade now, I can tell you that these issues tend to be more

prevalent with females. And this is something that me and my coaching team see a lot as well. When we onboard new clients, work with new clients, ask them what they're doing, what they're struggling with, and what kind of, you know, their pre-existing framework as they approach exercise tends to be, these things pop up a lot. So I'm really excited to work through these today. But before I do, I want to talk to you guys about my online coaching company, Core Coaching Method. Core Coaching Method is a project I've been working on for many, many years. It is kind of the brainchild of having worked with clients in person and online for a very long time and realizing that the online coaching space is largely populated by coaches who have never worked with clients in person. And while there's absolutely nothing wrong with

starting out in the online coaching space, you miss out on the nuances, the kind of finer details, not just from an exercise selection and exercise administration standpoint, but also from a communication standpoint. Communication is critical and integral to, you want somebody doing this for you who has real experience and didn't just get in shape themselves only to then pump out online plans. The cool thing about core coaching method is it is filled with certified personal trainers with at least five years of experience coaching in person and online. Everybody who works for me as a certified nutrition coach, and both myself and all of my coaches have spots available heading into spring. By the time you're listening to this, it's probably early on in March, and I would say that you're probably unlikely to get a spot if you apply in April. As we prepare to launch the programming app that will be launching April 2nd,

Home Heroes and Elite Physique. That will be the majority, or that will kind of occupy the majority of my focus. So there will not be really many opportunities to onboard new online clients in April and May. So if you are somebody who wants to take your results to the next level, you want to work with a qualified coach who's an excellent communicator, not just a programmer, but somebody who really understands the art of coaching and communication for a very affordable price. Something that I think having kind of done some research and seeing what other coaching companies are charging, I think this is an incredibly fair price structure, something that, you know, can really fit into a variety of different budgets. And all you have to do is

go to corecoachingmethod.com, click the coaching tab and apply to work with me and my team online. If you are local and in person and looking to kind of get back into that after a two-year hiatus with the pandemic, the Core Coaching Method Clinic Studio will be opening in probably late spring, early summer in Sonoma County for in-person sessions, physical therapy, rehabilitation, and semi-private one-to-four group training. That is coming down the pipeline. But for those of you who would like to take your results to the next level with a coach who cares, go to corecoachingmethod.com and apply for online coaching today. So let's get into the 10 biggest mistakes women make when they're training. And the first one is thinking that

training, eating, and supplementing like a man will turn them into a man. And this, of course, for many of you is probably a prevalent piece of misinformation that you're quite familiar with, which is kind of the assertion that men should lift heavy, do lots of compound movements, eat lots of protein, take creatine and grunt, and women should be small, quiet, lift light weights for high reps, drink lemon water, stay away from protein and creatine, and just kind of generally disappear. Like it's this crazy idea that I think is like unbelievably prevalent. Like no man that I've met thinks that there's anything wrong with lifting heavy, lifting with progressive overload, taking protein powder and supplementing with creatine.

So many women I may think that all of these things are either inherently dangerous or inherently so many women I may think that all of these things are either inherently dangerous or inherently masculinizing when in fact it couldn't be further from the truth. Women tend to deal with sarcopenia, muscle loss, age-related muscle loss, and osteopenia, age-related bone loss, much more so than do men. And one of the best ways to head this off early in life is to start resistance training as early as possible. But not just to start resistance training, but to resistance train in a way that's progressive and that applies a tremendous amount of mechanical tension to the body. And this is best done with moderate to heavy loads, free weight and machine training, not just slinking off to the back corner or the group exercise room and curling the fives and doing lateral raises and band work and all of the

things that women tend to be drawn to when they're exposed to this misinformation. I know that it can be very intimidating and I know that there are a lot of strange, creepy men in the gym. In fact, I had a discussion last week with my partner who told me that when she was at the gym in the morning, we go to different gyms, but she told me when she was in the gym in the morning, there was a guy just following her around and staring at her and it makes her extremely uncomfortable. And I totally empathize with that because I can absolutely understand how strange it is to have somebody in your exercise space

kind of intimidating you and making you feel uncomfortable. I remember when I worked at the gym, and again, this is as a guy, so I didn't necessarily feel particularly threatened. But I remember at the gym having a couple of members who were very, very non, let's call it non-vague or very, very obvious in their kind of staring at me or following me around and it's very uncomfortable. So yes, many women feel more comfortable in these settings, in these spaces

in the gym. That's why there's oftentimes women's only gym or even women's only sections. I totally understand that if that's what's comfortable to you, that is more than okay. But if you're doing these things because you think that lifting weights is masculinizing or that eating protein is going to make you big and bulky or that taking creatine is going to make you vascular and look like you're on anabolic steroids, these things could not be further from the truth. Heavy compound movements are phenomenal, and these are absolutely the central focus point of our upcoming elite physique app-based programming and really the central point of how we program for most of our female clients, whether they're lifestyle or whether they're physique enhancement clients. These are things that we are finding are integral for developing strength, coordination, and also muscle over the

long run, right? Another thing that I find women tend to shy away from is training the shoulders, chest, traps, and arms because these muscles are oftentimes thought of as being, you know, particularly masculine when they're developed. So oftentimes women will bias things like glutes, hamstrings, abs, upper back, because those are the muscles they tend to most want to develop. That's what's really in right now. And we feature those a lot in the upcoming Elite Physique hamstrings, abs, upper back, because those are the muscles they tend to most want to develop. That's what's really in right now. And we feature those a lot in the upcoming Elite Physique Programming. And I feature them a lot in the physique-based clientele that I'm working with in their programming. But you should train your shoulders. You should train your chest. You should

train your traps because they're muscles that have a function. Do you need to train them as much as a guy who wants a huge chest and big traps? Absolutely not. But you know, three to six sets a week for each of those muscle groups is going to keep your body moving and functioning in concert without allowing for any asymmetries and performance to develop, right? You don't want to have a weak, you don't want to be weak in the chest. You don't want to have weak traps. You might not want to have overly developed ones, but you still want to train those muscles. And you can shift that volume around however you like. And you can also include any of the movements you really enjoy. If you like the band work, if you like body weight stuff, you like those fun little plyo things that aren't really plyos, but that people think are plyos, including that is great. But the

first mistake I had to highlight is this notion that training in a way that is typical of a man will masculinize a female physique is simply untrue. All of those things are very accessible and very available to many women as long as you feel comfortable with them and implementing them fairly regularly will make a strong, capable, and resilient physique for the long run. Number two is, and this is something that I've seen a lot, particularly when I worked in the corporate gym setting. And that is that a lot of women have a tendency to do too much cardio or too much intense cardio before beginning their resistance training. A brief cardiovascular warmup is a really good idea, so much so that I tend to recommend between eight and 10 minutes of low intensity steady state

cardio before every resistance training session for a couple of reasons. The first of which is it gives you the opportunity to really get your mind right, if you will. It gives you the opportunity to really focus in, to think about what you have to do that day, to really review your programming. So for our upcoming app-based programming, you can be walking on the treadmill while you review your workout ahead, know what's coming, know where you're going to want to kind of take a shot at, you know, a PR, where you're going to want to kind of take a shot at, you know, a PR where you're going to want to take a shot at using the same weight for more reps, getting the opportunity to get your mental where it needs to be. But the main things are we're getting blood flowing, we're elevating the tissue temperature of the body so that our muscles can contract better,

breaking a little bit of a sweat, and we're not jumping into anything too cold. That's great. But what I have seen is a lot of women have a prevalence to do long, either low intensity, steady state cardio for 15 to 30 minutes of running, or they do HIIT, or they do these kind of bastardized plyos that aren't really plyos. They're like jumping around type things. If you're going to do true plyometric training with ground contact time, real amortization, you're looking to actually transfer connective tissue strength into power output by absorbing loads and exploding with things like depth jumps, box jumps, brog jumps, pogos, that might go earlier in your workout. But if you spend a ton of time on the treadmill exhausting yourself,

reducing the amount of fuel you have available to perform exercise, increasing the concentration of cortisol in your bloodstream by simply just doing more rigorous exercise, what you'll find is you kind of run out of juice in your lift a little more quickly. So don't do too much intense cardio before your resistance training. Ideally, do a little bit to get warmed up, not too intense. If you have some intense aerobic sessions you'd like to get done, do them as separate sessions or after your upper body training.

But things like HIIT cardio and things like Stairmaster cardio or even jogs and runs of long distances before lower body training, I think can be really counterproductive. And so many of the women who come to work with us are interested in developing their glutes, thighs, etc. So, you know, depleting too much going into those sessions can be a little bit dangerous. So, you know, depleting too much going into those sessions can be a little bit dangerous. 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. Number three, I highlighted this earlier, is allocating too much time for band work. I think that band work has its place. It can be good for warming up and building kinesthetic awareness. It can also be good for cueing external rotation and abduction when performing exercises like squats and using it as a warmup for those. But it's not a particularly loud hypertrophy stimulus. It's largely going to drive what we call metabolic stress, where you get a good pump and you build up

some metabolites that aren't particularly going to help with muscle growth. And, you know, when we talk about why people use bands, they often use bands to add a battery of additional exercises to their glute training. And I think you can allocate a small percentage of your time for this. I think that it is penalty-free volume that does not really inhibit your recovery. And in fact, it could enhance your recovery if you do it on your rest days. But allocating a large percentage of your time to this in place of things like heavy squats, heavy deadlifts, heavy Romanian deadlifts, progressive things, you know, that's going to probably send less of a signal to your body to build muscle because the main driver is going to be volume accumulation and mechanical tension, particularly mechanical tension. accumulating volume or, you know, getting more weight on the bar or doing the same weight on the bar for more reps consistently, uh, because you don't make enough time for it because you're

spending 20 minutes before you train doing banded hip abductions, lateral band walks, donkey kicks, et cetera, you might be leaving some gains on the table. And I do see a lot of women still relying very heavily on band work, even in a gym setting when they have the opportunity to focus on other stuff. Um. So I think there's a big opportunity there. Number four mistake is an overemphasis on high volume work or doing high volume work the wrong time. So what I mean by this is there's absolutely nothing wrong with sets of 15 to 20. I, you know I deploy this a lot when programming, particularly for things like isolation work, metabolite specific work, certain exercises, certain joints do a

little bit better with higher rep training. For example, you can probably do more higher rep training for shoulders, arms, and calves than you might want to do for something like, say, hamstrings or deadlifts. So if you're like, okay, I want to do a heavy exercise, I'm going to use a compound. I want to do a high volume exercise. I might not use that same compound, right? And so one of the main issues I see is an over-reliance on the 15 to 20 repetition range, not a lot of high mechanical tension work done with that like 6 to 12 rep range. But I also see that stuff come first. So people will, or more specifically in this situation, women will do, you know, 15 reps of hip thrusts followed by 15 reps of leg extensions, and then do heavy squats. And what's happening here is you're fatiguing a lot

of the musculature in advance of these high output sets. And so making sure that your higher volume work is positioned properly and in a way that doesn't rob from your most progressive mechanical tension focused work. So be very aware of where you position things in your workout. Your heaviest, highest output sets in your most complex exercises should be positioned earlier in the workout when you are the most fresh. once in a while you can deploy a tactic like pre-fatigue or pre-exhaust, but for most people, you're going to want your highest, most complex work done first and foremost, period, end of story. Okay, number five, I don't see a lot of women pushing for strength PRs. Now, this doesn't mean one rep maxes, and I see this problem a lot, but just generally looking to get better on your squat. Can I squat more for three or five or eight reps? We'll talk about volume PRs in a minute, but looking to push for strength PRs. Are you getting stronger? The more often you probably say, hey, I did this weight for the very first time,

even if it's not a one rep max, the more likely it is that you are going to make progress, which is why in the app-based training for both Home Heroes and Elite Seek, I have the ability as your coach to actually tag an exercise as a PR. And so you can see that this exercise across the entire training block will be something that I would like you to try to hit PRs. So I just toggle a little trophy icon on, and it will be something that can be a volume PR, a weight PR, a rest period PR, you name it. But in this instance, let's use a weight PR. And maybe in week one, we have four sets of five squats. And then in week three, we have five sets of three squats. And then in week one, we have, let's say,

three sets of five. Week two, we have four sets of five. Week three, we have five sets of three. And week four, we go for a PR. Each one of those weeks, you'll actually see an icon encouraging you to push more weights and hit a PR, and you'll be able to gauge your progress against the other people using the app that are on your team, which is really, really exciting. This shows up in how we do programming for our online clients as well. But looking to give you the opportunity to get stronger at the compound lifts, because I see that way too many people are not leveraging that. And yes, some people struggle with the confidence. Some movements like squats require a spotter. Absolutely. I want you

to have access to all those things. And I think that people struggle with pushing it because they're just not comfortable. And that is a stone that is largely left unturned that I think can really improve the quality of your training. Moving on to number six, sticking with the theme of pushing new weights is not leveraging the power of a volume PR, meaning if you can comfortably squat 135 pounds and you always squat 135 pounds for 10 reps, can you push it for 12 or 15 reps? Volume PRs are different from maximum weight PRs, but they're still PRs nevertheless, and they tend to be a little bit easier on the body So leveraging the power of a volume pr right can be a really powerful way to drive progress And to achieve progressive overload moving on to number seven. This is more specific

We're going to unpack some specific muscle groups here, but this is, you know, being afraid of chest training, arm training, trap training. And I want to talk a little bit about why these are so important. So specifically with chest, when we talk about the chest, we're usually talking about push-ups, chest presses, machine presses, and cable flies. And there's a longstanding myth that doing chest work will shrink the size of your breasts. It will reduce the size of your breast tissue. And many women are pretty cognizant of the size of their breast tissue, and they're not particularly inclined to reduce it through exercise. This is effectively the spot targeting myth, which is to say, if you do chest training, it's going to shrink your

breasts. The irony here, of course, is that most women are entirely enthusiastic about doing a lot of glute training, but have no fears that doing glute training will shrink their glutes. So think about it like this. When you train your glutes, you're not going to be metabolizing the fat on top of them in the same way that if you train your pectorals, you're not going to be metabolizing the fat on top of those muscles, which just so happens to be your breasts. And your chest is an important muscle for maintaining integrity of the shoulder and helping you press. So neglecting it entirely can be problematic. Some great exercises for chest development and chest strength that won't necessarily result in like hulking masculine pecs, and they will have absolutely no impact on the breast tissue are things like pushups, machine presses, and bench presses. Training

the shoulders can be a really good way to develop the actual body from a bodybuilding and physique enhancement standpoint. Typically, a little bit of broader shoulders will make the waist seem smaller, and many women are interested in making their waist seem smaller. And a little bit can really go a long way. You can develop your shoulders fairly easy using things like Y-raises, lateral raises, prone trap raises, rear delt flies, front raises, overhead presses, etc. Even some of the chest exercises I mentioned. And having strong, fit, healthy shoulders will make it easier to perform all of your lower body work. Neglecting the shoulders altogether is generally a bad idea. And the last piece is the upper and lower traps. So the upper trapezius are responsible oftentimes for that shrugging motion that many

people think of when they think of the traps, scapular elevation. But one of the things you need to be aware of is that you don't have to train your traps a lot to have your traps be strong. And you might not even have to train them directly. You can probably get quite a bit of trap training done from just some plain old heavy deadlifts, but occasionally working in things like face pulls that work the upper and lower traps or things like thoracic extension exercises can really actually help with your posture. And so skipping out on all of these things altogether

might not be the best thing for the way your body moves and looks in the long term. So remember, training these muscles is good for movement quality. It's good for symmetry. A little goes a long ways and it keeps your shoulders moving and functioning properly because every single one of those muscles has

interplay with either the scapula or the glenohumeral joint or that ball and socket shoulder joint. So moving on to number eight, and that is spending too much time on core training. And I know this sounds crazy because I really don't think this affects too many people because I think most people don't do enough core training. But I have found in the same way that women have a tendency to allocate a tremendous amount of time towards band work, they have a similar tendency to allocate a tremendous amount of time towards lying on the floor ab training. The right amount of ab training can make a huge difference. But I find that many women train abs for several minutes a session. They start with their abs, they finish with their abs, they do abs all the time, they have a whole day for abs. And it just takes time away from other things that might be more effective for

physique and strength development in the long run. And one of the things about ab training that's cool is yes, it is direct and it very much highly affects the abs, but you have other ways of indirectly affecting the abs that can be pretty effective too. So for example, things like squats and deadlifts train your core indirectly. They might not be as effective, but if you put a lot of energy and effort into those, you'll probably get away with doing a little less direct ab work across the week and stand a much better opportunity to develop your physique as a whole. Number nine is the tendency to do too many lower body training sessions. I find that two to three days a week is the sweet spot for elite physique. When we built the app out, we generally have two, a lower body training sessions a week

with an optional third total body session that has multiple different body parts featured like shoulders, glutes, hamstrings, et cetera. But that third day is optional and it's based on your recoverability. So for most women, two lower body sessions a week is going to be more than sufficient for developing the muscles that I'm so commonly told women would like to develop. But I know many women who train lower body five days a week, every single day, they go in and they do glutes every single day. What I think happens is I think it increases your fatigue. I think it decreases your output capabilities and generally it will lead to

less efficient training over time. And then the last mistake, this affects men quite a bit too. It's, I think, an extension of body dysmorphia and neurotic tendencies. And that is training six to seven days a week or training for multiple weeks on end without taking a break, getting tremendous anxiety about taking breaks from training, not feeling comfortable taking breaks from training, feeling the need to train every day when you're on vacation, these kind of neurotic attachments to training. And I do think it holds people back. Remember, you only make the gains you can recover from. For most natural lifters, four to five sessions a week is going to be substantially enough, and it might be better than six to seven. More training isn't always better. Better training

is better. Remember that, guys. So without further taking from your very valuable time, let's review these 10 mistakes. The first is that thinking that training or including nutritional strategies that work for men into your diet will turn you into a man. That is simply untrue. Number two, doing too much intense cardio before training or doing too much intense cardio after training when it could be done as a separate session. Number three is an over-reliance on band work. Number four is doing too much high volume work before your heavy sets or not enough heavy sets in general. Number five is not pushing for strength PRs. Number six is not leveraging volume PRs. Number seven is being afraid specifically of training the chest, shoulders, traps, and lower traps.

is being afraid specifically of training the chest, shoulders, traps, and lower traps. Number eight is allocating too much time for direct core work. Number nine is doing too many lower body sessions. And number 10 is doing too many overall sessions per week and not allocating time for recovery. I want to thank you guys so much for tuning in. If you have not yet, take two minutes and leave me a five-star rating and review on iTunes or Spotify. It makes a massive difference in helping the podcast surge up the charts and helps more people find what it is that I'm working on. I appreciate every single one of you who maintains their subscribership, who shares this show, and who shares it with friends. Word of mouth is still the best way to help a podcast grow. I want to thank each and every one of you individually, but I can't. So please share, tag me

so I can say thanks on Instagram. Again, at Danny Matrengo over there. You can follow me on TikTok as well. I just joined TikTok. I'm having fun with that as well as on YouTube. Thank you to our sponsors, Legion Athletics, Seed, and Elemental Labs. And I will catch you guys on the next one.