Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 177 - 8 Forgotten Exercises + 8 Trendy Ones (Try These)

Episode Date: March 25, 2022

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What's going on guys, welcome into another episode of the dynamic dialogue podcast. As always, I'm your host Danny Matrenga. And in today's episode, we're going to be going over eight exercises that I think time has forgotten or that were created or popularized a long time ago that I think are still quite valuable, or just training modalities in general that I think are quite valuable that might be lost to time. And then eight trendy exercises and exercise modalities that I think are here to stay that I think are good. And these are actually things that you'll see featured quite a bit in the programs that we have over on my website. This is of course, through my coaching and fitness company corecoachingmethod.com, where you can find all of our online coaching offerings, whether you'd like to work with me or a member of my coaching team. We work with clients of all fitness levels to achieve all fitness goals with fully comprehensive one-on-one online coaching that gives you direct and immediate access to either myself or a member of my coaching team to answer any and all of the questions that you might ask a personal trainer for form review, for custom programming, customized nutrition coaching, biofeedback monitoring, and weekly accountability

check-ins, you can go over to corecoachingmethod.com, click the coaching tab and apply to work with us online from anywhere in the world at any fitness level. Or if you're local to Sonoma County, you can come check out the studio and physical therapy clinic that will be opening this summer. And again, if you are somebody who's a little bit more self-motivated and you just want to take an app with you to the gym or a program with you to the gym, programs are available on corecoachingmethod.com as well. And the app will be launching first week of April. And those two specific teams on the app will be Home Heroes and Elite Physique, one of which is designed for those of you training at home with minimal equipment. And then the other is designed for those of you who want to go to the gym and take

your physique to the next level. Specifically though, for women who want to maximize the development of their glutes, back and shoulders with sustainable long-term progressive hypertrophy programming. So those also have a community element where you can interact with me, my team, ask questions of both myself and the other members of this team. It's going to be really fun. I can't wait to see you in there. And it's going to cost less than your daily cup of coffee. And that of course includes very inexpensive coffee. Like quite literally, this will be just a smidge more than a dollar a day to have your training and programming on autopilot. And if you want more investment, more education, more one-on-one connection, online coaching is for you. And we do have some spots available going into spring, summer. All right, guys. So opening up with eight forgotten exercises

or exercises that I just don't see programmed very often. The first is the Arnold Press. So this of course was popularized by icon, bodybuilding icon slash movie icon slash former governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Now, the Arnold press isn't anything special. I've heard other people refer to it as a rotational press, but what it is is it is a dumbbell press in which the dumbbells start in front of the body with the palms facing towards the face and chest. As the lifter presses upwards, there's quite a bit of external rotation that occurs at the shoulder as the glenohumeral or ball and socket joint pivots outward, pulling the elbow with it, eventually allowing you to reach the full overhead position as you would if you were pressing overhead with a barbell, a machine, or especially with dumbbells where dumbbells are now

facing each other and thumbs are facing each other. So at the bottom of the press, pinkies are facing each other and at the top, you've done a full 180 degree turn with the shoulder with getting from basically full internal rotation all the way into an externally rotated and extended overhead position. I like this because it forces the lifter to use less weight when performing the overhead press. It allows the lifter to press through a full range of motion that incorporates both flexion and extension. So you're getting a lot of extension of the elbow. You're flexing and you're going up high into that overhead press. So you're getting quite a bit of tricep. You're getting quite a bit of deltoid, all this stuff that you'd get with a normal press, but you're

training the shoulder through a much more complete range of motion. You can do these seated. You can do these standing. You can do these alternating. I quite like them a lot. The next one is ironically one of these sort of like Eastern European named exercises. This is the Copenhagen plank. Like there's the Copenhagen plank, the Bulgarian split squat, the Romanian deadlift, the Russian kettlebell swing. All of these like Eastern European countries seem to have a lot of disastrously difficult lifts associated with them. But the Copenhagen plank is a plank in which the lifter is squeezing something between their thighs. So usually what you'll see is the lifter will elevate their body by squeezing a bench between both thighs, activating the adductors or the adductor muscles of the lower body.

activating the adductors or the adductor muscles of the lower body. This will keep the body off the ground while the shoulder remains in the traditional plank position, or you're either extended up all the way into that full elbow extended plank. But basically, think about a plank where your legs are off the ground and you're creating a third stability point by squeezing onto a bench, or I should say a second stability point. This is going to activate the core in all the same ways the traditional side plank would. It also challenges the shoulder too. So you're creating core and shoulder stability. But what I like about it is you're doing both of those things while engaging the adductors. A couple of like muscle groups that I think people have a tendency to avoid just in general are the things that stabilize the core and shoulder. And then of course the adductors. It's very easy to kind of

neglect a lot of that stuff in your training. A lot of people just neglect core altogether in favor of doing a lot of compound lifts, which certainly challenge your core, but a little bit of core and shoulder stability work can go a long way. And then training the adductors while doing that is kind of, you know, a little bit of the Copenhagen plank once or twice a week if you can throw it in there. It's in a number of my programs because I think it's an effective exercise for training the core and the various core subsystems and muscles that work in alignment with the core for both athletic potential and postural stuff like the adductors. But this is a really cool lift. Number three, this one's been forgotten, but it certainly made a comeback more recently, and that is the sissy squat, which is basically the most extreme form of body weight squatting you can do where you kind of go up onto your toes and allow your knees to travel very far forward, lowering your torso with your hips and extension. It's really challenging and definitely not the best movement for anybody who struggles with knee pain, but sissy squats are a phenomenal quad exercise for

anybody who has really good knee development already, like their knees are already pretty sturdy and they want to take their body weight quad training to the next level. If you don't have a lot of equipment, this is a good one. You can also do a body weight leg extension, which is basically the opposite of a Nordic ham curl, but I do prefer sissy squats, which can be regressed by holding onto something or holding onto a band. And then when you get lower and lower and you pick up more band tension, the band can actually help pull you up from the bottom. Number four, this one kind of has a funny name, but I picked this one up from

coach Eugene Teo when I went to one of his seminars a couple of years ago, which feels like a lifetime ago because it was before the pandemic, which ironically at the time of recording, this is March 15th, which was the last time I trained one-on-one clients at a fitness studio. I've been doing it out of my house lately with a beautiful garage gym that fortunately I was able to stock full of the best equipment. I'm very grateful that I was able to do that and really continue unimpeded by the pandemic, with the exception of making sure that everything was as safe as possible and that my clients felt comfortable in that environment. But March 15th, 2020 was the last day I trained at a studio. And so having a date on the calendar

to open my own studio here in the next couple of months is pretty full circle. I'm literally sitting here talking about like, okay, I remember actively programming for clients, whether it was Zoom sessions in person or clients who are online who had minimal equipment. And they were doing things like sissy squats and Copenhagen planks, because those are very effective body weight exercises. But I think this seminar that I went to with Eugene Teal was probably the last thing I did before the pandemic from a continuing education in person standpoint. Thankfully, a lot of the continuing education stuff for coaches has moved largely online. Um, but this was the last time I did that. And that was, you know,

towards the end of or very beginning of 2020, I think. And then boom, March 15th, which is what, you know, the date is today, March 15th, 2022 was the last time I trained at the studio. So interesting. But the monkey shrug is a shrug in which the arm, so this, this is the name of the exercise, the monkey shrug. I don't know if you guys got that. I learned this from coach Eugene, but what you're doing is you're abducting the shoulders a little bit and letting the arms kind So this is the name of the exercise, the monkey shrug. I don't know if you guys got that. I learned this from Coach Eugene. But what you're doing is you're abducting the shoulders a little bit and letting the arms kind of hang down like a monkey when you're doing the prototypical like memification, ooh, ooh, ah, ah, tucking the hands under the armpits,

making a silly face monkey thing. But what happens when you abduct the arms slightly is the traps have a really good line of pull. And holding on to dumbbells with this kind of funky grip allows for some really effective trap training. Another thing you can do here is just set the dual cables out and let your arms kind of sit naturally at like 25 to 30 degrees of abduction away from the body and pull in that alignment or do a snatch grip Smith machine shrug. That is a personal favorite of mine for developing the traps. Speaking of snatch grip, another exercise I

picked up from Coach Eugene that's kind of largely been forgotten. It's of course very popular with Olympic lifters, but not too many, I would call them general population fitness enthusiasts do these. And that's the snatch grip deadlift. The snatch grip deadlift is effectively a traditional deadlift, except the only difference being you are holding the bar wider. You are holding the bar where a Olympic lifter would hold a bar when performing a snatch. This is a popular accessory movement for Olympic lifters because, of course, they need to train to do the snatch, the clean, the jerk. But you can't always be throwing weight violently over your head. So some days when you drill for certain exercises, you break them down into different components.

And one of the components of the snatch is the snatch grip deadlift, right? You're actually deadlifting the bar before you get into the full overhead snatch position, of course, and you don't deadlift the bar with a conventional grip. But one of the advantages of holding the bar out wider is it forces you to use a little more stability through the upper back, and it allows you to deadlift with higher RPEs and overall lower weights because the limiting factor is rarely the grip, and it's very to deadlift with higher RPEs and overall lower weights because the limiting factor is rarely the grip, and it's very, very rarely the glutes and the hamstrings. For well-developed lifters, it tends to be the capacity of the upper back. So a good upper back developer, another one

I learned from Coach Eugene. All right, one I love here, another old one, probably vintage Arnold era when we talk about popularity, is the concentration or just more specifically the idea of training the bicep with the arm extended a little bit or flexed I'm sorry a little bit in front of the body so when you do a concentration curl typically what people will do is they will sit on a bench lean forward plop their tricep against the front of their thigh allowing their body to lean slightly downward and hold a dumbbell so that it's all the way down towards the floor. Pushing into the thigh with the triceps, they curl upward, using the thigh as a base of support and basically doing a preacher curl one arm at a time

by leaning forward and using their leg to act as a bench. 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. Training the biceps with the arm in front of the body

really challenges the biceps in the shortened position. Training the biceps with the arm behind the body as in an incline curl really challenges the biceps in a lengthened position. So other forms of exercises like this that I really like are the spider curl. The spider curl is a very popular one, but you don't see it too often. Number seven on the list is another form of curl.

This one is the Zotman curl. And I had to look this up because I assumed, of course, when you hear something like Zotman, you're assuming that this exercise is named after somebody with the last name Zotman, which it is. It's named after an old school power lifter from the early 1900s or early turn of the century, 1942, was when George Zotman passed away, but he was born in 1867 and he's an American strong man from Philadelphia. And this was a training tool for him. And the Zotman curl is cool because what you do is you curl up as you typically would with dumbbells, supinating while you come up, pinkies coming towards the body as the elbows flex. But then on the way down, you turn the palms down. You're going to rotate the forearm so that your pinkies go from facing each other to facing away from each other, and you go down almost as if you were doing a dumbbell reverse curl. So curl up normal, and then reverse downward in a different position. What you're going to find is you use your biceps quite a bit on the way up, and you train the brachialis, and you train a little bit more of the forearms on the way down, and eccentric forearm work can be really good for long-term

elbow health, and this is a good one for chasing a nasty pump. I quite like the Zottman curl, which leads us to number eight. This is more of a modality thing, and that's just training the forearms in general. Training the forearms is very, very unpopular amongst most lifters, specifically women, because I completely understand not wanting to have a quote-unquote bulky or well-developed forearms, but training for grip and forearm strength, I think we should make the caveat grip strength, can really help you develop the overall strength of your body in the absence of things like straps. You certainly can use straps when you're in the gym to do things like deadlifts, RDLs, split squats, and not be limited by your grip. Having a strong grip and well-developed forearms over time can help you in real world situations,

and it can also help protect your elbows. So those are the eight forgotten exercises and training styles. One is full range of motion, shoulder pressing or the Arnold press. Two is adductor training and Copenhagen plank. Three is body weight, leg extensions in general, like sissy squats and body weight leg extensions. Four is the monkey shrug. Five is the snatch grip deadlift and any other Olympic lifting analog that might have carryover. Number six is the concentration curl or more specifically curls done with the arm front of the body. Number seven was the Zottman curl and number eight is direct forearm work. Moving on guys to eight trendier, more recently popular exercises that I really like. Number one is the hack squat, most specifically the reverse banded hack squat.

The hack squat is a great quad exercise that really limits the body's ability to recruit things like the adductor magnus and glute max that can come to play when you're doing a barbell squat. Because of the position of the sled and the body's inability to rely on hip extension while maintaining such a vertical torso, you're going to hammer your quads. You're going to get deep into knee flexion. You'll work a little bit of the rectus femoris, but this is one where you can absolutely smash your quadriceps. When you add bands to the hack squat, what you end up doing is making it easier in the position where you're at the very bottom, where traditionally and conventionally a squat would be the hardest. When you're doing a squat, you have weight on your back, whether it's on a sled or a bar, it's going to be pretty hard to get out of the hole. That's why when most people

fail on a squat, they fail in the hole. That tends to be the weakest part of the lift. It's also the part of the lift when doing a barbell squat, where you use muscles like your glutes and adductors. You also use your quads, of course, but when you're on a hack squat, it's really hard to get out of the bottom because you don't really have the ability to extend your hips with a ton of force because you're just up against the pad and at kind of a weird angle. So having bands on allows you to have a little bit of help and the point of the lift where you're the weakest so you can really overload the quadriceps in that lengthened and mid-range position. The quadricep exercise that best challenges the quads in the shortened position, of course, is the leg extension where it's hardest

at the absolute top of the movement. So this will really allow you to challenge yourself and doing them with reverse bands become popular with a lot of hypertrophy-centric coaches. And I quite like them and I do them myself and occasionally I'll program them for my clients if they have a good hack squat machine at their gym. Number two is behind the back cable lateral raises or cable Y raises done with cables. I think that in general, cable lateral raising is awesome because it evens out the resistance profile of an exercise that has a pretty challenging resistance profile to begin with, with like a dumbbell or free weight lateral raise, so that it's pretty consistent throughout the movement. You don't have these steep drop-offs that make the movement feel clunky. And I find that in general, flying out in the shape of a Y tends to be better for the medial delts, whether you're doing that with cables behind the back or cables in front of you and coming all the

way up overhead. Number three is the weighted dip. Now dips have been around forever and this could easily gone on the other list, but many people were not doing weighted dips or weighted pull-ups until very recently with the exception of a few communities that really need to rely on strength in those positions, whether that be acrobats, rock climbers, etc. But the dip is a great movement for hitting the costal pec fibers or the sternocostal pec fibers, which depending on who you talk to, are the bottom most regions of the pec. Those fibers tend to have a line of pull that will generally be triggered or hammered the most by movements similar to dips or decline pressing. Or not necessarily decline pressing per se, but pressing or flying downward at an angle in alignment with those costal fibers.

So the dip is a great exercise for this, but what you'll find is that as you get stronger and stronger, it becomes increasingly challenging to make a dip a hard enough exercise without doing a massive amount of reps. So weighted dips are a phenomenal costal pec exercise that I've seen make kind of a comeback, but become popular for new reasons. Used to be that this was something that people did to get stronger with like relative body weight, like, oh, dips are too easy, not hard enough. You know, what I want to do now is I want to do weighted dips so I can either do more dips or show off. But now what I see is a lot of people are very aware

that the dip challenges the costal pec fibers and that by strapping on a dip belt where the dip or the actual weight is pulling downward almost in the same angle as well is going to allow you to stress those fibers that much more and get better development of the pec. Number four is the cross body tricep cable extension. This is done on a dual cable. So that's the machine in your gym with the cable arms that can be moved and basically 360 degrees. You pull them all the way up towards the top so that your elbows can sit naturally at an angle known as the carrying angle. Most people

have a little bit of internal rotation at the shoulder naturally, especially if they have developed lats and pecs. And what you'll find is when you do triceps rope extensions or straight bar extensions, which are still great exercises, can get a little bit uncomfortable on the elbows. So if you have sensitive elbows, using dual cables that naturally allow the elbows to sit slightly away from the body, but still lined up really nicely with the cables, you can hit the triceps really, really hard without overdoing it. I have a few Instagram reels and YouTube videos explaining how this one works, so you can definitely check those out. Number five is the facing away cable curl. And this is a kind of

newer, more popular version of the incline curl where the arms are behind the body. I love the way it feels with a cable compared to incline curls with dumbbells, which I find to be really, really hard in that length and position or at the bottom most position. This evens it out just a smidge. And I love supersetting this with traditional facing the machine cable curls. This allows me to get an absolutely nasty pump challenging the biceps in both the lengthened and shortened position. Number six on my list of more trendy things that I think should stick around is machine training. Machine training used to get absolutely trashed by everybody in the fitness industry, especially in the early to mid 2000s, because trainers were really jaded about people coming to commercial gyms and being like, hey,

I don't want to do a free session with you to learn anything. I just want you to show me the machines. I just want you to show me the machines. I just want you to show me the machines. I just want you to show me the machines. And people would get so upset, especially trainers. They go, machines are dumb. You can do so much more with free weights, which is true, but machines have phenomenal applications. And some machines are better at targeting muscles while maintaining some kind of gentleness, if you will, on the joints than their free weight counterparts. So if you completely eliminate machine training, you're kind of leaving a lot on the table. And I have seen machine training come back in big ways in the last couple of years.

It's really common to go into the gym and see really experienced lifters who have respectable totals on their big lifts and have good form and technique, opting to use machines so as to better preserve their joints and tissues and to better challenge muscles using some of the kind of benefits of machines to their advantage. So this has been really, really cool to watch and it's made me super happy. Number seven is the Bulgarian split squat, which for a very long time was something I really didn't see much of in the physique community at all. You saw it mostly in the sports performance community. When people started really going crazy about developing their glutes in, you know, I'd say somewhere between 2012 and 2014, it was mostly hip thrusts and squats that people were talking about. Very rarely did you see people doing Bulgarian split squats, but the craze of glute development and the ability for the Bulgarian

split squat to really challenge the glute has made it have like a rebirth or a resurgence, if you will, amongst gen pop lifters. It's no longer a really hard lunge for athletes. It's become a really good lunge for, I think, pretty much everybody who can tolerateters. It's no longer a really hard lunge for athletes. It's become a really good lunge for, I think, pretty much everybody who can tolerate it. It's also a great quad developer, the main difference being with a more vertical torso, you'll challenge the quads. And by leaning forward, you'll load the glutes a little bit better. Moving on to the final one, this eighth one, this is a modality and a, I could call it, I guess, philosophy that I hope sticks around. And that's training muscles more than once a week. When I first entered the fitness industry, the bro split was unbelievably

popular amongst bodybuilders, both recreational and professional alike, whether you were somebody planning on competing or completing very seriously, or you were somebody who just was trying to build their physique. Training a muscle group one time a week was very popular. The chest, back, shoulders, arms, legs, five day a week bro split was kind of the way to go. And it's what I did for a very long time. But with the kind of popularity of natural bodybuilding and evidence-based bodybuilding on the rise, and people realizing that naturals need to train different than lifters who are on steroids, training two to three times a week per muscle group became more popular. As a young trainer,

I found when I worked with a lot of general population people who were training with me two to three times a week and doing nothing else, that I also had to resort to total body sessions that allowed us to hit each muscle group two to three times a week because there wasn't a lot of stimulation. And what I found is that multiple times a week per muscle group sessions tends to be a really good way for naturals to train, to develop muscle, to lose fat, to avoid excessive soreness, to maximize their training response. It's definitely something that I hope sticks around. So reviewing those, we have number one, hack squats and banded hack squats. Number two, behind the back and y-lateral raises. Number three, crossbody cable curls. Number four, crossbody tricep extensions. Number

five, facing away cable curls. Number six, machine work, just philosophically speaking. Number seven, the Bulgarian split squat. And number eight, training frequency. Thanks so much, guys, for tuning in. I hope you learned something from this episode. If you did, share it with a friend. Word of mouth means an awful lot. A trainer you like, a fitness enthusiast you like, somebody who you know who's just starting their fitness journey and wants no nonsense, no BS education in the fitness space, send them my way. If you have not yet, leave me a five-star rating and review on iTunes. Every single one pushes the podcast up the charts and makes a big difference. Thanks so much for tuning in and I'll catch you on the next one.