Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 188: Q and A: Crossfit, Powerlifting for Aesthetics + MORE!

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome in everybody to another episode of the dynamic dialogue podcast. As always, I'm your host Danny Matranga. And in today's episode, I will be fielding your questions directly from my Instagram. These are unscripted answers pulled literally directly out of my hand. I'm holding my phone, pulling these questions out of Instagram to answer them for you here in the most raw, unedited, and unadulterated form. I want to give you guys on-the-spot answers that are quick, effective, and help you actually accomplish what it is you're looking to accomplish with your fitness. If you want to engage with me on social media and on my various social medias, Instagram is probably the best place to do it. My handle there is at danny.matranga. You can also find me on TikTok and on YouTube. Happy to have you follow me there. But to get in on future Q&A episodes, just like this one, and have your fitness questions answered in greater detail than I can answer them

Starting point is 00:01:03 on Instagram, the best thing to do is just toss me a follow over there. Pay attention to my stories. I post one of these at least once a week. And occasionally I will pull these questions for the podcast. So we'll work through as many as we can today. I have about 40 minutes as I sit down to record this in between clients and meetings. And again, this podcast isn't overly produced. It's pretty raw, pretty unedited and coming straight to you guys with basically the most straightforward answers I can give you to your fitness questions. So without further ado, let's get into question number one. This one comes from Jamie NQZ. She says, sedentary work life. Do you recommend cardio every day or focusing more on nutrition? So for those of you who are sedentary, but you have a weight loss goal or a body fat loss goal,

Starting point is 00:01:53 it's very challenging to do this more than probably I'd say any other lifestyle. When you're sedentary, it's really going to limit your total daily energy expenditure or the amount of calories you burn across the day. So you'll have to eat substantially lower calories than somebody of similar size, weight, and age who is substantially more mobile. To get into a deficit, you have to eat quite a bit less because your total daily energy expenditure is lower than the probably average person, your height, weight, age, etc. So I would recommend doing and scheduling additional movement. It does not have to be cardio. Perhaps cardio that you're thinking here might be elliptical, treadmill, stairmaster. It

Starting point is 00:02:38 can be as simple as taking your dog on a couple extra walks, planning steps in around your day around the office. Those things will help substantially and they will help you raise your TDEE, your total daily energy expenditure. And just because you have a sedentary job doesn't necessarily mean you have to be sedentary. For a number of the clients that we work with in my coaching company, Core Coaching Method, one of the things we focus on with our clients who have little to no activity during their work life is trying to promote as much activity as possible, whether that's asking your supervisor if you can take calls away from your desk on a walk, or focus more on nutrition, you need to focus more on your nutrition, particularly for those of you who are sedentary. If your goal is body fat

Starting point is 00:03:30 reduction, you're going to need to be really, really tight with your nutrition to stave off kind of the constraints of a sedentary lifestyle. Okay. This question comes from Gabby Carballo. And Gabby asks, is there a difference between walking lunges and lunges where you stay in place? So yes, there is. So a lunge where you stay in place can really be categorized into three specific forms, or four rather.

Starting point is 00:03:56 There are side lunges where you, again, end up in the same space in between each rep, reverse lunges where you end up in the same space between each rep, forward lunges, same thing, and split squats, which are essentially just lunges where where you end up in the same space between each rep, forward lunges, same thing, and split squats, which are essentially just lunges where you're moving north to south. The Bulgarian split squat or rear foot elevated split squat, we'll remove from the conversation here. In general, split squats, which are simply just stable lunges up and down, not even moving backward, forward, or to the side, are easiest and require the least

Starting point is 00:04:25 stability. They are good for training the quads and glutes. The front, reverse, and side lunge require a little bit more stability because you are going back and forth between two positions. So you're going out to the side and then back, or to the front and then back, to the reverse and then back. And they're all very good for training the adductors, quads, and glutes with the walking lunge being the most advanced. Because there is a stride component, you are striding forward, planting, lunging, coming all the way up and through with the other leg, the amount of stability required by the lifter or by you is going to be the greatest. So on a continuum of least advanced to most advanced, I would probably go split squats, reverse lunges, forward lunges, side lunges, walking lunges. I love walking

Starting point is 00:05:15 lunges because they're excellent for enhancing mobility and for helping one kind of increase hip, ankle, and knee strength, as well as the strength of the muscles around those, most obviously, of course, being the glutes and the quads. But they are not the same. The walking lunge is probably the best of the four I mentioned for developing the glutes. I like the reverse lunge for this as well.

Starting point is 00:05:41 Forward lunges I don't necessarily love. They tend to be a little bit tough because of the deceleration component. And I really like split squats and rear foot elevated split squats. This question comes from Marsha Pereira. She asks, bad idea to have protein while training. Timing just happened, so that was best option. I don't think there's any problem whatsoever with supplementing with a protein powder while training. In fact, I think that supplementing with protein powder pre-workout as well as intra-workout can be just as effective as what we conventionally think of, which would be, of course, the post-workout protein shake. So much of protein marketing in the early

Starting point is 00:06:25 days of supplemental protein was kind of built around the notion of getting protein in after you finish your session to enhance recovery. And intuitively, it makes sense. Break down muscle tissue, break down muscle protein, ingest dietary protein, give bodybuilding blocks required to build back proteins bigger stronger therefore muscles grow back bigger stronger very intuitive very sensible but here's the thing there are digestive bottlenecks here even with something that absorbs as quickly as whey protein and even some plant proteins right there is a little bit of time required to ingest something get it to the stomach,

Starting point is 00:07:05 and get it to the small intestine where it can be absorbed into the bloodstream to be utilized in its most, you know, reduced form. So, to put this in perspective, we don't really use proteins. We use the amino acids that they're made of to do a variety of different things in our body. So, the pre-workout protein shake, and Kevin Tipton was the name of the researcher who founded this, or who studied this most recently, I believe it was in the late 90s. And if I'm not mistaken, Kevin Tipton passed away recently, rest in peace. But Kevin Tipton took a good look at a variety of different things specific to protein timing. And I remember in my undergraduate courseworkwork coming across findings

Starting point is 00:07:45 of his that basically said, if you have your protein before your training or after your training, it doesn't make too big of a difference, but before you train, it might be better because those amino acids are digested, assimilated, and in circulation already. So I would imagine intra-workout or during your training is a fine time as well. The problem is, of course, that not everybody is necessarily excited about the notion of pounding back a thick gelatinous protein shake while training. It can be quite unpalatable, and many people are much more focused on sipping on something that won't, you know, hit the stomach, like water or electrolytes, or even supplements like BCAAs,

Starting point is 00:08:20 which I do think are an inferior option the way they're often used. So if you're looking for an intra-workout supplement, I might recommend electrolytes and essential amino acids, but you could absolutely do something like electrolytes and protein or just protein or just switch it to pre-training. But having it while you're training is not bad for you in any way, shape, or form. Okay, this question comes from LilG833. She asks, how do I calculate my calorie deficit? Very simple. You can go to the website corecoachingmethod.com and peruse our many free guides. We have a nutrition fundamentals guide right there that you can download for absolutely free. It teaches you how to calculate your total daily energy expenditure,

Starting point is 00:09:11 which is the number of calories you burn in one day. If you eat less than your total daily energy expenditure, you should be in a deficit. Of course, when you calculate your TDEE, there's always room for error. It's not perfect, but assuming you figure your TDEE to be 2000, this is a hypothetical situation, and you eat 1500 calories, you can expect to be in about a 500 calorie deficit. Not too complicated. This question comes from Han Nguyen, and she asks, you recently mentioned targeting the lats without adding traps. What are a few of your favorites? So first, let's go over the anatomy of the back. Of all of the different regional areas of the body, right? Lower, upper, posterior chain, anterior chain, quads, glutes, hamstrings, chest, shoulders. The back specifically has a variety, probably the most

Starting point is 00:10:00 muscles that move the arm in the most unique ways across the most unique paths. For example, you have the rear delts, the rhomboids, the lats, the lower traps, the upper traps. You have multiple different fibers of those lats as well, and that they kind of run and orient themselves slightly differently. So to stimulate each of those fibers or to punish each of those fibers and stimulate them the most, you're probably going to want to pull from multiple different angles. Some of the most common back movements that we love to do, things like pull-ups, lat pull-downs, one-arm rows, barbell rows are great and they do involve the lats, but they also often use secondary muscles. Taking a little break from the action here to tell you about our amazing partner, Seed.

Starting point is 00:10:49 Seed makes the best probiotic supplement on the market, bar none. I'm very confident with that because I think that the probiotic space and the gut health space in general is filled with people who have no idea what they're talking about or who are looking to make a buck. This isn't to say your gut health isn't important. In fact, it's probably one of the most important and most intriguing developments we have seen in modern medicine and modern physiology. Our relationship with our guts is critical. It's crucial. And taking care of that by eating a lot of different plants, a lot of different fruits and vegetables, getting a diverse array of

Starting point is 00:11:25 fiber and resistant starches can go a long way, but so can supplementing with a high quality probiotic. Seed makes the best probiotic on the market with 53.6 billion active fluorescent units. These are organisms that are going to be alive and helping transfer a variety of different benefits to the human host. All these things are actually proven to work in humans. These strains work in humans, not rodents. Seed is not cheaping out here by providing you with any random strain. They're providing you with strains that help with digestive health, gut immunity, gut barrier integrity, dermatological health, cardiovascular health, micronutrient synthesis, as well as many other things. They're vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free,

Starting point is 00:12:05 soy-free, nut-free, shellfish-free. So very friendly for those of you who may have a variety of different allergies and who are looking for a supplement you can take that can enhance a variety of different things. I have a very, very good track record over many, many years of having to deal with things like eczema and having to deal with things like psoriasis on occasion, especially when the weather changes. And I swear to you, since I started taking seed, I have noticed substantially less of that. And there's four strains included in seed shown to help with things like atopic dermatitis. So there you go. Not to mention the plethora of strains for the health of your gut. If you're looking to take your gut health to the next level,

Starting point is 00:12:43 you can go to seed.com. Subscribe for their daily symbiotic. You can take one or two a day. You can share it with a partner. Sometimes you can do that, but it goes a long way. It's the best probiotic supplement on the market. I absolutely love it. And you can use the code Danny15 to save. Back to the show. What's going on, guys? Taking a break from this episode to tell you a little bit about my coaching company, Core Coaching Method. More specifically, our app-based training. We partnered with Train Heroic to bring app-based training to you using the best technology and best user interface possible. You can join either my Home Heroes team, or you can train from home with

Starting point is 00:13:23 bands and dumbbells, or Elite Physique, which is a female bodybuilding-focused program where you can train at the gym with equipments designed specifically to help you develop strength, as well as the glutes, hamstrings, quads, and back. I have more teams coming planned for a variety of different fitness levels. But what's cool about this is when you join these programs, you get programming that's updated every single week. The sets to do, the reps to do, exercise tutorials filmed by me with me and my team. So you'll get my exact coaching expertise as to how to perform the movement, whether you're training at home or you're training in the gym. And again, these teams are somewhat specific. So you'll find other members of those communities looking to

Starting point is 00:14:01 pursue similar goals at similar fitness levels. You can chat, ask questions, upload form for form review, ask for substitutions. It's a really cool training community and you can try it completely free for seven days. Just click the link in the podcast description below. Can't wait to see you in the core coaching collective, my app-based training community. Back to the show. What's going on, guys? Taking a break from the show to tell you about our amazing partners over at Elemental Labs. Elemental Labs makes a flagship electrolyte product known as LMNT Recharge. Recharge is amazing. It's got bioavailable forms of sodium, potassium, and magnesium, which can really help you train, contract your tissues,

Starting point is 00:14:46 and get hydrated. I love having it in the morning before my fasted training because oftentimes I wake up without an appetite, but I want something in my stomach so I'm not flat, I can get a pump, and I can get hydrated in the gym and still perform my best. I also love to sip on my recharge when I'm on the golf course or especially when I'm in the sauna. The more you sweat, the more likely it is that you will need to replace valuable electrolytes like sodium, magnesium, and potassium. And while if you have high blood pressure, you might not necessarily be a candidate for electrolyte supplementation, many athletes and active adults need more salt and more electrolytes in their diet than they currently get, especially

Starting point is 00:15:23 if they sweat, live in warm climates or humid climates. I found a bunch of different ways to use my recharge, but like I said, I love using it before and during my training, whenever I do something active outside or my sweat rate increases, or when I'm in the sauna. And you can actually try it completely for free. All their best flavors that are totally free of sugar have only 10 calories. They're sweetened naturally and they come in amazing flavors like raspberry salt, orange salt, citrus salt. My favorite is the mango habanero or mango chili and the leban habanero, which I take in the sauna. There's flavors for everybody, and you can check them out by going to drinklmnt.com. They'll send you every single flavor in an individual packet

Starting point is 00:16:05 you can try them out completely free just pay shipping drinklmnt.com slash coach danny get your sample pack today completely for free just pay shipping back to the show many times the lower and upper traps specifically the upper traps can come to play on a lot of rowing movements and so if you're not cueing and executing an exercise properly, you might notice not just a buildup of sensation in the upper traps, but also asymmetrical development between the upper traps and lats. So a few movements I love, one of which I learned from Coach Chasm of N1 Education, and it's become quite popular, is a chest-supported lat row. You can do this on a dual cable,

Starting point is 00:16:46 but what you're going to do is set yourself up so that your chest is supported by a bench and your arm is out in front of the body, kind of directly extended. I'd say, give you guys a visual of this, above the chest, but below the chin, if that makes any sense. So it's going to be right out in front of the body, almost like you're dunking a basketball or Michael Jordan in the Jordan logo, if you can think of that. And so then what you would do using that cable and that chest support is drive the elbow down, keeping the hand neutral and the upper traps aren't really going to have an opportunity to move the arm in the way they might on a more horizontal pull, like a cable row or a barbell row. And this is a great way to isolate the lats. I like to do these, and I also like to do lat

Starting point is 00:17:31 pulldowns and straight arm pulldowns and pull-ups, but these are kind of my go-to favorite lat building exercise these days. And I've made a couple Instagram reels about them, so you can actually go to my Instagram, swipe down a little ways and find a tutorial for how to do that one arm lat biased chest supported row. And you can do it without the chest supported row, simply getting yourself set up. Okay. This question is from Marlene Barcelo. She asks, can you power lift and still get aesthetics? So the answer to this question is very simple. It is yes. Many of the kind of foundational golden era bodybuilders that we think of when we think of the beginning of the bodybuilding age or when bodybuilding became popular did a lot of power lifting, whether these are barbell bench presses, barbell squats, or barbell deadlifts. These were

Starting point is 00:18:20 movements that were integral to the development of their physique. While I think there are substantially better options for driving hypertrophy in 2022 than maybe in 1965, you can absolutely develop aesthetics by getting better at the big three, which of course are the fundamental and central components of the sport of powerlifting. I think that the barbell bench is great for the chest and shoulders, although it's, I believe, inferior to the dumbbell press. I think the barbell squat is phenomenal for quad and glute development, and I think there's certain exercises that are better for developing the quads and the glutes, but it's up there. And while I don't love the deadlift as a developer of the back, I think it's often overrated, there's no denying that it trains your erectors, and it will build a lot of

Starting point is 00:19:04 strength and enhance your ability to recruit your nervous system to move heavy loads across all of your lifting. So you totally can power lift and still get aesthetics. No doubt about that one in my mind whatsoever. This question comes from NP Mastro Cola and he asks what my thoughts are on CrossFit. and he asks what my thoughts are on CrossFit. So my answer to this question is pretty simple. I think that CrossFit as a sport can be dangerous because it basically asks relatively unconditioned individuals to join this highly intense community and perform a variety of highly technical movements, oftentimes for time, with the primary bottleneck being the individual's ability to move these movements or move these loads with good technique kind of going out the window. So what you often see is general population individuals joining

Starting point is 00:19:58 CrossFit gyms, getting involved in these amazing communities, getting excited, being put through punishing, challenging workouts where they're asked to do highly complex movements for time. And the prevalence of injury in some of these CrossFit boxes is higher than I might like. So there are things I don't like about CrossFit. That is the primary one. The second thing probably is the like pseudo cultish vibe and the pseudo obsessive vibe around like keto carnivore and just the general weird affinity for like tacticalism. I don't even know if that's a word, but like the weird fetishization of like everything CrossFit, like stylistically fashion, like even the way the equipment is overbuilt, almost as if to look like tactical or like paramilitary. Like, I think that's fine. And

Starting point is 00:20:41 I think that's super inviting for a lot of dudes. But in terms of the actual workout quality, I think that the way many CrossFit boxes program could be better. But there's also a ton that I love about CrossFit. The first is the community. The second is the kind of fact that it's built around some barbell and mainly compound movements. That's a double-edged sword there when you start in adding time constraints. But I love that it incorporates multiple elements of fitness from gymnastics to aerobic exercise to strength and power training.

Starting point is 00:21:14 I think CrossFit is really, really cool. I think there's a lot more going right with it than going wrong with it. There's just a few things about the culture of CrossFit and the sport of CrossFit that I don't think make it super accessible or enjoyable for general population lifters. But I do think for people who are looking for an athletic pursuit or something to challenge them, the sport of CrossFit could be really cool. This question comes from Perez underscore MG. And she asks,

Starting point is 00:21:39 four days of lifting and one day of cardio. Would that make you lose muscle? Absolutely not. I say about 60% of the clients we work with at Core Coaching Method, these are the clients that work with me or my coaching company, are training on a four-day-a-week workout plan. Whether they started with three days a week and we moved them to four, or they started with six days a week and we moved them down to four, I think four and five are absolutely the sweet spot when it comes to exercise. I think you can go up to five and six if you recover really well, and you can get a ton out of two to three if you're just getting started. But I love four as a sweet spot. No reason to think at all if your sets are challenging, done with good technique,

Starting point is 00:22:21 and close to failure, that you would lose muscle training four days a week and doing a single day of cardio. I think you're absolutely fine with that, and I think you could train for the entirety of your life just following that outline specifically. This question comes from Charlene Campbell. Good question. Should certain workouts slash muscle groups be paired together? Not sure what to pair. So let's use a conventional framework for looking at exercise here. But I think what makes the most sense to pair together are muscles and patterns that effectively train globally the same mechanics. So we have a few mechanics like pushing, pulling, squatting, and hinging, right? And it oftentimes makes sense to pair agonists together,

Starting point is 00:23:05 meaning things that do the same. So like maybe on one day you do your presses. It also sometimes makes sense to pair antagonists together, where you do the exact opposite, where you might pair your presses with your pulls. And how you go about deciding that has a lot to do with how much volume you can take, how well trained you are, how complex your training needs to be to keep you progressing. you can take, how well trained you are, how complex your training needs to be to keep you progressing. For most people, I think you can develop workouts that divide the body into upper and lower training sessions, where you train the pushes and the pulls for the upper together, and you train the squats and the hinges for the lower together. But you can get more advanced and break that into a push-pull leg split, for example, where maybe you do your first push day and really

Starting point is 00:23:46 group the shoulders and triceps together. But in your second push day, you group the chest and the triceps together because those three, chest, shoulders, and triceps, all kind of work similarly on the main movements you'd be training. For the pull musculature, you could do one day that biases the lats and the biceps, and then another day that biases the traps and the brachialis, for example. These are muscle groups that will work together on both days, but you can shift the exercise selection to better target certain tissues. And then lastly, maybe you have a leg day that focuses more on quads and one that focuses

Starting point is 00:24:18 more on glutes, and you select exercises accordingly. There's very few exercises that shouldn't be paired together if the fitness level of the individual is, let's say, great. But how you make these decisions is going to largely depend on what your goals actually are. So your training should be built around your goals, what you're looking to accomplish, and what's most pertinent. So it's hard to answer this question specifically, but I do think a general answer works pretty well. This question comes from Emlins1. She says, is it harder to lose weight as you get older? Asking for a friend. So I think what many people often say is substantially harder to lose weight when you're older. And they will often say things to the tune of when I was your is, it's substantially harder to lose weight when you're older,

Starting point is 00:25:09 and they will often say things to the tune of, when I was your age, it used to be so easy. I had no doubt that you've heard these kinds of things. What tends to change across the lifespan as people age, much more so than metabolism, and you can look at Ponzer's work regarding this, I believe, to quote probably imprecisely that your metabolism changes and down regulates by about 0.7% per year every year after you hit about 50 or 60. I'm not sure, but this was published very recently. Point being, yes, it does change as you age, but not as much as people think. What tends to change more than anything is actually movement, how much movement people get and the things that they do with their time. And so oftentimes when you reference those golden years where you could just keep the fat off,

Starting point is 00:25:51 you were more active. You might've been busier. You might not have been eating as much or drinking as much. So there's absolutely very possible to lose weight as you age. And to just give you some context and a little bit of the inside scoop on what I deal with is, you know, I train a lot of clients, especially women who are in middle age around menopause even, and those hormonal fluctuations can make it really tricky. But I have yet to meet a woman of advanced age, as old as 75, or even young, who could not lose weight. You might have to make adjustments, but truth be told, the mechanics are very similar. And I think that if you stick to your diet diligently, it becomes quite a bit easier. You'll often hear something similar said about like, oh, it was so easy before I had kids. After I had kids, my body went to shit. It's like,

Starting point is 00:26:38 not necessarily. What oftentimes happens after you have kids is you put your kids first and, you know, you eat the foods that you feed your kids and you don't exercise as much because you've got to get your kids to and from places. Your life changes, right? So it's not that your physiology is abandoning you with age so much as how does your lifestyle change as you change? So just keep that stuff in mind. All right, guys, that does it for today's Q&A episode. If you did enjoy the episode, be sure to share it with your friends. Leave me a five-star rating and review on iTunes or Spotify. That stuff makes a huge difference, and I can't wait to catch you on the next one.

Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 188: Q and A: Crossfit, Powerlifting for Aesthetics + MORE!

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