Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 180: The 20 Best Moves for Legs and Glutes + APP TRAINING LAUNCH

Episode Date: March 31, 2022

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Hey, everybody, welcome in to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. As always, I'm your host, Danny Matranga, and this is episode 180. We're going to be going over my 10 favorite exercises for developing the glutes and lower body from a structural standpoint, from a physique standpoint, from an athletic development standpoint now. We won't be covering things like plyometric training or mobility exercises for enhanced mobility or power. But what I want to cover is bang for your buck movements that will help you develop your legs and glutes in a holistic, well-rounded way. We're going to go over 20 total movements, 10 of which you can do from home, 10 of which you can do from the gym. Of course, if you go to the gym, you can probably do all 20 of these movements.

They're different in analogs, in some way, shape, or form of lunging, squatting, hinging. You'll like them. You will find them featured in all of my programs. They're featured in all of our clients that we work with, core coaching method clients, coaching programs. These are really the bread and butter leg movements. And I think you guys will absolutely love this podcast. We'll open up with 10 that you can do at the gym. We'll finish with 10 that you can do from home, and you'll walk out of here with 20 high-quality exercises that you can use to develop your lower body.

Now, before we do that, I want to go ahead and say thank you to a number of you who have left some reviews on the podcast. Now, most of these reviews were left on iTunes or the Apple Podcasts app, but Spotify works as well. Any review you leave helps the podcast trend better on the charts, helps more people find it, and helps me grow. This message or review is five stars. It comes from Jillian Monk 56. She says, hypermobility issues have blown my mind. Thank you for bringing some light into my struggle. Your podcast is wonderful. So this is something that I've talked about before, which is the hypermobility issues. I deal with my elbows

and how that can lead to tendinitis, but just trying to kind of share my own story through the podcast. And every once in a while, it kind of resonates with one of you guys. So thank you so much for that. This one is five stars from Allie Borey. She says, not only rich in information, but the way Danny explains things is very detailed and simple to understand. This one is from Steve Cyclist, five stars again. And he says, I love Danny's podcast. I always learn something from every episode. He's well-spoken and makes it really simple to understand. Really great content. I love these reviews, guys. This last one comes from Barka12HL, five stars. They say, Coach Danny really knows his stuff, and I always find his podcast very

informational, and I'm always looking forward to the next one. I really appreciate these reviews, guys. One of the themes from the four that I shared today was just kind of making things simple and easy to understand, which is one of the goals of all of the content I create, whether it's on Instagram, YouTube. By the way, if you haven't, go ahead and follow my YouTube channel. It's just my name over on YouTube. I just started it very recently. Tons of exercise tutorials and videos. But one of the things I'm trying to do is simplify all of this for you. So if you're an expert, you understand it in the most concise way. And if you're new to it, you don't get lost in the weeds. Speaking of which, before

we get into these exercises, if you're listening to this episode, it is launch week for my upcoming training app through Train Heroic. And you guys, my pod fam, my podcast listeners, I want you in that community. I want to get to know you that much better. I think that you guys and I could have a ton of fun and make some serious gains. All the exercises we're going to talk about today are going to be featured in these programs, whether it's Elite Physique, which is done at the gym, or Home Heroes, which you can do from home.

Our first block of programming starts April 4th, Monday, April 4th. So by the time you hear this, it'll probably be the last day of March, you can go in and sign up, reserve your spot in the Home Heroes training community or the Elite Physique training community. So when April 4th comes around, Monday, April 4th, you can hit the ground running with programming ready to rock, done for you. All you need to do is show up, open the beautifully interfaced app, log your weights, assess your readiness, and compare and collaborate with other people on your team so you can make progress, have community. And again, you'll be getting direct access to me, my core coaching method team. We're in there

inside the app, ready to take your training to the next level. So if you're hearing this now on Thursday, when this is dropping, you can actually go down into the show notes and pre-reserve your spot. You can actually go through the Training Heroic marketplace, join the elite physique team, the home heroes team, download the Train Heroic app, get it customized with it. So come Monday, we are ready to start. This is Coach Danny Matrenga's programs brought to you in partnership with Train Heroic. These programs are updated every single week so that you continue to make progress. And every single month, you'll get a fresh new mesocycle with awesome training designed to help you develop the best body that moves the best, feels the best, and looks the best

in terms of anything you've ever done before. So listening to this now, you can go ahead and head down to the show notes, join the training community, or you can go to corecoachingmethod.com, click the training app menu, and select Home Heroes or Elite Physique. menu, and select Home Heroes or Elite Physique. Okay, so getting into the 10 best exercises for leg and glute development that you can do at the gym or that you will need a gym to do unless you have a well-equipped home gym. And number one should not surprise many of you, and that is the barbell squat. But we're going to specifically talk about the application for each and every single one of these exercises. And so the barbell squat as it's used to develop strength, motor coordination, and overall lower body development.

So the barbell squat is excellent at challenging the quadriceps and glutes, particularly the glutes in the lengthened position, which is sometimes hard to do, but that's where they are challenged quite a bit down in the bottom position of the squat. You're also going to really develop the quads. And the deeper that you squat, the more ankle mobility that you have, the better quad development exercise the barbell squat will be. So it's a good hypertrophy exercise, sure. But mechanically, it is important to be able to get good ankle mobility, good knee mobility, good hip mobility to train those movements in synergy together in concert, right? So as the knee moves forward and we mobilize the ankle, as the knee bends and we use the knee musculature, as the hip actually allows for rotation to occur, whether it's

external rotation, right? Or just general articulation of the head of the femur and the acetabulum, the squat trains that lower body through a full range of motion. Not all of its ranges of motion, but a full range of motion squat really takes those lower body joints and trains them through a pretty substantial range of motion, which is the bread and butter of what we're after for strength and for mobility and for muscular development. Now, could you get better quad development out of a hack squat? Sure. And we will talk about the hack squat down the road. But the barbell squat is a great bread and butter movement for lower body movement quality and lower body movement strength. So that is one that is going to be featured heavily in all the programming that we do. And there's plenty of ways that you can actually augment this depending on your equipment and depending on your mobility level. But something like a barbell squat is a must, in my opinion, for developing that lower body strength. Number two is the Romanian deadlift. I love the Romanian deadlift because it, just like the squat, trains the ankles, knees, and hips through a unique full range of motion, the Romanian deadlift trains the hips to really hinge

and really take that femoral head through that whole acetabulum, pushing those hips back, stretching those hamstrings, stretching those glutes, challenging the posterior chain. It's a posterior chain movement where you can load up quite a bit of weight, whether you do it with a barbell, whether you do it with a dumbbell, it allows you to load up that hinge. This is the barbell squat for the posterior chain, if you will, whereas the squat is the anterior chain movement. barbell squat for the posterior chain, if you will, whereas the squat is the anterior chain movement. This is peanut butter and jelly. These two go together. If you want strong, capable, lower body movement quality, right? You need to hinge the hips. You need to bend the knees. Those two movements allow you to do that. These two movements too allow you to load up quite a bit of weight, be fairly stable, and get strong and create lines of tension that are really valuable for your

overall training capability. What I mean by that is this, the squat teaches you how to brace. The RDL teaches you how to brace. They teach you how to maintain a flat back. They teach you how to maintain a tight core. These are really valuable exercises. And so that's why they're one and two on the list. Moving on to number three, this is specifically to develop the glutes. Now, the first two were a little bit more general in that I think if you did these two exercises, theoretically, you could train every single muscle fiber in your lower body. And that's hardly an exaggeration, right? As you're probably very well aware, the barbell squat and the Romanian deadlift hit every muscle fiber

in the lower body pretty well, but you do need to, of course, go in and challenge those fibers and their length and position and their shortened position with your feet in different positions. You know, there's a multitude of exercises. Moving on to the third one, which I like a lot, and that is the leg press. Now, the leg press gets poo-pooed a lot because it is a machine exercise, because it's highly stable, because a lot of people will load it up and do half reps, because it's very, very easy to move a substantial amount of weight on the leg press. But do understand that the leg press is a great exercise for training the quads and the glutes, depending on where you position your feet on the sled and depending on the actual manufacturer of the press. But for glute development specifically, I like to do the

leg press and the single leg press more specifically, where when doing the single leg press, I can keep my hips very stable and have quite a bit of output without needing to load up a massive amount of weight. So if I'm trying to do like a heavy, heavy leg press, I can put like a bajillion plates on there, right? But if I keep my foot close and central to the platform, kick one foot off to the ground, stabilize my hip and do single leg presses, all of a sudden it becomes a phenomenal glute training exercise. So I like doing my leg presses with my feet close and central to the platform to use this as a glute developer. If you move your feet further down, you'll get more knee flexion and it's a great quad developer too. But doing it single leg allows you to stabilize the pelvis and create quite a bit of force production. So that's why the leg press is

on there at number three. Number four is the seated hamstring curl. So this is a phenomenal machine exercise that I think challenges the hamstrings quite a bit. Many people ask me between the lower body machine movements, specifically for hamstrings quite a bit. Many people ask me between the lower body machine movements, specifically for hamstrings, the lying hamstring curl and the seated hamstring curl, which one's better. And I don't think that one is necessarily better. I think they both have their applications. But what I like about the seated hamstring curl is it trains the hamstrings while the hips are in the flexed position. So knowing that the hamstrings are a hip extensor,

when they're contracted, we know that they are lengthened when they're flexed or when the hip is flexed. So this challenges the hamstrings in the lengthened position. This is good for hypertrophy. This is good for muscular development, and this is kind of hard to do at high volumes. So this is a great machine for challenging and helping to develop your hamstrings. It's also very easy on the lower back. And when you think about movements that we often use to develop the hamstrings, we'll use things like hinges and kettlebell swings or deadlifts, right? And those can challenge the low back. This kind of takes that out of the equation, which I quite like. And this is an exercise that I'll often do for higher repetitions. This is an exercise that I'll often do for higher repetitions. The fifth exercise on this list is the leg extension machine, another machine that, like the leg press, gets a bad rap. It's probably not the best for people who have existing knee pain or that particularly deal with challenges around the patellar tendon or patellar area,

but the quadricep is hard to train in the shortened position. Like I mentioned before with the squats, they're particularly hard for the quadriceps at hard to train in the shortened position. Like I mentioned before with the squats, they're particularly hard for the quadriceps at the bottom of the movement or in the lengthened position, right? So when we're training the quad in the shortened position, or when it's mostly like flexed in the leg extension, we're kind of getting something we can't get anywhere else. This is one of the better exercises for training the quad in that position. It will help you develop the VMO vmo will help you develop the vastus lateralis It will help you develop the big quad muscle the rectus femoris, right?

You can contract all three heads of the quads You don't need to do anything crazy or move your feet Just plug on in line up the the actual knee joint with the axis of rotation on the machine pull yourself down So that you're stable and flex the shit out of that quad Another exercise that is good for moderate to high repetitions because of that stability, you can use it to chase a good pump and drive some metabolic fatigue in a way that you probably won't be able to do with some of these other exercises. And so these two exercises show up quite a bit in the elite physique training

program because I think they're a great way to challenge the quadriceps and the hamstrings at various contractile ranges in a way that I think will really enhance physique development without incurring a bunch of additional fatigue for the lifter. 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. Number six is the reverse banded hack squat, something that I have learned from a number

of different people. I really don't know who exactly popularized this at first. I want to say it might be from Charles Poliquin because a few of his pupils have taught it to me and he is kind of at the apex of this trickle down of information that kind of sifts its way through over the years. But what we're doing here when we're doing the banded hack squat is adding bands to the squat and the hack squat really isolates the quadriceps so that the bottom portion of the movement is a little easier where you have the most band tension. As you descend to the bands, pick up resistance. As you push up, they lose resistance. So you'll get the most help out of the bottom, which means you'll have a little bit more challenge

in that mid range, which is great. But you can also really load the shit out of your quadricep training using a hack squat because it's nice and stable. So reverse banded hack squats are a favorite of mine. I really, really enjoy them and they're great for quad development. Number seven, you've probably been waiting for this one

to make an appearance on the list, is the barbell hip thrust. The barbell hip thrust is phenomenal for challenging the glutes in the shortened position, but you can also do it on a Smith machine. I'm not a huge fan of the Smith machine in general, but I do think it has some great applications, one of which is for hip thrusts. The bar being kind of on a guided path and some extra stability, which I think is great for output. And I've programmed probably in the last two years, just as many Smith machine thrusts as I have barbell thrusts. I like both for hip extension, power and strength. I love both for hip and extension hypertrophy work,

particularly glute hypertrophy work. But if you want to challenge those glutes in the shortened position, you can use the hip thrust, tuck the chin, keep the eyes down. You want vertical shins at the top, squeezing the glutes hard. This one is just a bread and butter movement that I don't think you can really replace if you want to develop a powerhouse caboose. A lot of people have pooh-poohed it in recent years saying that it's overrated, which I actually believe is true. I do think it is overrated, but I do think it deserves a spot in the top 10 here. I don't think it can replace your squats and your Romanians, but I think it's a phenomenal, phenomenal bread and butter hip extension movement. Number eight is the Bulgarian split squat, which for many years existed exclusively in the kind of

power lifting athletic performance space. It wasn't really thought of as a great exercise for developing the quads and glutes, but it is because for two reasons here. One, it allows you to really train at a unique range of motion where you can stabilize one knee on the back or one foot behind you and get deep, deep, deep into a lunge. And then again, whereas when you'd use a barbell, you might need to use quite a bit of weight to challenge the knee extensors and the hip extensors. With a split squat, you can use one or two dumbbells, really reduce the load on the spine, really reduce the load on the back. You can use things like straps, so you can hold even heavier dumbbells. You can use things like a stick

or a pole or a PVC pipe to stabilize, but this is a great exercise to challenge your legs. I like lunges in general, but the Bulgarian split squat, particularly a heavy supported Bulgarian split squat is a a heavy supported Bulgarian split squat is a phenomenal exercise for developing the glutes and the quads. All you need to do to bias one or the other is change the angle of the torso. Moving on to number nine, we've got the standard and seated calf raise. Again, these you can do without a gym. You can do these at home, but I like to use these as early workout ankle mobilizers. And again, if you push that calf work off towards the end of your workout, it's very, very easy to skip it altogether.

Unfortunately, many, many people will do that. But I think that for most people who aren't interested in developing their calves, there's still reasons and rationale behind training them. Like I mentioned, ankle mobility is really important, particularly for squats, lunges, and overall development of the lower body. And training your calves through a full range of motion, contracting them and then lengthening them under load is an awesome way to enhance the mobility of your ankles. So I like to do two to three sets of standing and seated calf raises in my lower body warmup with submaximal loads, really enhancing the stretch position for about 15 to 20 reps. It takes about three minutes. I can go back and forth between the two without resting, doing about 12 to 15 reps seated, 12 to 15 reps

standing, resting for a minute, repeating two to three times. Like I said, I can just superset the two, taking a short rest in between or not resting at all for one to three sets. I think that's perfect. And number 10, this was a hard one. There were several honorable mentions, many of which will be on the upcoming home list, but this is the low back extension, specifically the glute focus, low back extension, where you set the back extension machine up to about 45 degrees, push your hips into the pad, squeeze your glutes. It's a phenomenal way to challenge the glutes. You can also externally rotate the feet quite a bit, so you drive some additional sensation there, but a really, really effective glute exercise. So guys, the top 10 exercises for developing a well-rounded, strong, and mobile lower body.

If you have a gym or the barbell squat, the Romanian deadlift, the leg press, particularly the single leg variation, the seated hamstring curl machine, the leg extension machine, hack squats, particularly reverse banded hack squats, hip thrusts. We love them on the Smith machine as well. Bulgarian split squats loaded heavily with an external stabilizing support, standing and seated calf raises done to mobilize the ankles and back extensions to fortify the back and develop the glutes. Moving on to the 10 exercises I like for lower body development that you can do at home or with next to no equipment. Number one, and again, these are in somewhat of a particular order, but number one is the walking lunge or the reverse lunge or the Bulgarian split squat,

which we'll talk about in a second. But the Bulgarian split squat is a little bit different. So we'll save that for number two, but the walking lunge or reverse lunge. The reverse lunge is a bit of a regression. So if you can't lunge quite yet in a walking fashion, then you can do reverse lunge. But I love using lunges for distance or for time as a means of challenging the legs, training them through a full range of motion, hitting the quads, hitting the glutes, and you don't need much weight. I will oftentimes do walking lunges with a weighted vest, which I find is a very effective way to challenge my legs. However, I don't need a weighted vest. I can do bodyweight walking lunges and absolutely torch my legs, bodyweight reverse lunges and absolutely torch my legs. If you are training with a little bit of equipment or no equipment at all, mastering

the lunge pattern is a phenomenal way to develop your legs because of the way it challenges them through such a full range of motion. And again, you're using half of your lower body power basically at one time when lunging. So your body weight is being lifted by only half of your lower body's capability level. So you can really use your body weight is being lifted by only half of your lower body's capability level. So you can really use your body weight to your advantage with single-legged exercises, particularly walking lunges. So number two, I hit on this already, is another lunge variation higher up on the list here, and that is split squats or Bulgarian split squats. We've the Bulgarian split squat in the gym list at number eight, doing it heavily and supported. But when training from home, I find split squats,

which are done with both feet on the ground, or Bulgarian split squats where the rear foot is elevated. And doing these for high reps, partial reps, one and a quarter reps, isometric holds, all of it makes the split squat a very versatile home lower body developer. So do not skip out on your unilateral work. That's going to be the bread and the butter kind of of what you do when your equipment is limited. Number three is a goblet squat, particularly a goblet squat performed with the heels elevated to add additional range of motion and allow you to get deeper into the squat to challenge the quads to reinforce mobility. Goblet squats are really good because you can kind of get that

counterbalance effect too that will often allow people to squat lower. And it's a way to load a squat with just one dumbbell. And for those of you who are training at home, you don't necessarily have a full stable of dumbbells. You can elevate your heels on something like a book or elevate your heels on something like a $10 squat wedge, get up and under a dumbbell, squat nice and low, explode up and be all set to go nice and low, explode up and be all set to go. Number four, you can do this at home with no equipment. It is a hamstring slider with your feet on the floor on top of something like a towel or paper plates. You do need tile, hardwood floor. Carpet doesn't really work well for this, but what you're doing is you're extending

the hips and sliding the feet towards the butt. There are glute ham rollers that are designed especially for this, and I like that exercise as well, but I'm putting this list together under the assumption that you might not necessarily have a ton of equipment. So hamstring towel sliders are an awesome way to train the hamstrings as knee flexors, right? The quads are knee extensors, the hamstrings are knee flexors. They're also hip extensors, so it's really cool muscle when you think about it. Contrasting that the quad does knee extension and hip flexion with the fact that the hamstring does knee flexion and hip extension. They're so beautifully opposite. It's amazing how the body comes together like that. But this is a great way to train that pattern from home. Number five is a

quad developer I quite like, and it is the sissy squat or the bodyweight leg extension. Think about these as the reverse of the Nordic hamstring curl, but very advanced for those of you training at home with a lot of strength and a lot of, let's call it knee functionality. You can leverage the sissy squat or the bodyweight squat. Number six, I quite like another dumbbell squat variation, almost a hip hinge squat hybrid. It is the straddle squat where you hold one dumbbell in between the legs and you squat up and down in a semi-hinged position. I find this can be good for developing the glutes as well as the adductors. And it's another way to load your squats, a unique vector, if you will, that I think can develop the legs fairly decently. Number seven on the list is

the kettlebell or dumbbell swing. Depending on what you have access to, you can hold a kettlebell a little bit easier than you can hold a dumbbell. But regardless, you can hinge your hips in a snappy ballistic fashion where you're really focusing on good form, good technique, and good execution, right? But what we're training whenever we swing ballistically is hip extension power. And that's going to involve the glutes and the hamstrings. If you do these for time, there's going to be a core and lower back and conditioning component as well, which I enjoy. So that's why when equipment is limited and I want to train hip extension power, I can

do that with a swing in a unique way that at the gym I might use something else. But here, at least I have something to work with from home. Number eight, this might be challenging depending on what you have access to, but it is the Nordic hamstring curl. Nordic ham curls are extremely challenging, especially for the hamstrings in the eccentric portion of the lift. It's a little bit more advanced than the hamstring slider, but a phenomenal hamstring developer that you can do from home.

Number nine is hip thrusts, specifically single leg hip thrusts. Although you can do a number of hip thrust variations from home with two legs, whether that be banded, single leg, B stance, ISO holds. I've done a little bit of training down at the glute lab in San Diego with some of their coaches who are no longer there. But one of the things I learned while I was down there was that the glutes actually show up pretty well when you look at their actual ability to produce force with no load. So they're an muscle group that you can train with pretty high motor unit recruitment, even without loading them. So, you know, two feet on the ground, heavy barbell hip thrust is obviously going to light up the

glutes, but a single leg hip thrust is going to be somewhat comparable compared to other single sided unilateral body weight analogs. So this is something that I think you can get away with a little bit in terms of overall glute development. You can really leverage the power of the single sided unilateral work here from home and wrapping it up with number 10 is the step up lateral step ups, forward facing step ups. Step ups are awesome for the glutes. They're awesome for the quads and nobody ever does or talks about them. They're totally forgotten, right? You've got squats, you got lunges, you got hinges, you got hip thrusts, but nobody ever talks about step-ups. Step-ups can be done in the sagittal plane, front to back or the frontal plane, side to side. And

they're awesome for developing the quads and glutes. So 10 exercises you can do at home to develop your legs, walking lunges for distance or time, split squats with high reps or partials, gauntlet squats with a heel elevation, hamstring towel sliders, sissy squats, bodyweight leg extensions, the straddle squat, the kettlebell swing, the Nordic hamstring curl, hip thrust, single leg hip thrusts, and step ups. These are all featured in our Home Heroes training program, which is again coming out on the 4th. Elite Physique comes out on the 4th. You start training April 4th. You can get in and you can join that community today. The minute this podcast goes live, you can head down to the show notes, click the link to train with us in the app,

sign up, download Train Heroic and get ready for April 4th for the most productive training of your training career. And if you want to do it another way, you can go to corecoachingmethod.com, click the training app tab and select Home Heroes or elite physique. They're both the same in terms of price. The schedule is a little bit different. Elite physique is four to five days a week. Home heroes is four days a week. All you need for home heroes is bands and dumbbells and a space to train at home and elite physique will require that you have a gym. I want to thank you guys all so much for tuning in and I cannot wait to see you inside of our training app. Have a great one.