Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 201: My favorite exercises, BBL's + MORE!

Episode Date: June 22, 2022

Thanks For Listening!  LEAVE A REVIEW OF 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 (iTunes) HERE. You can also leave a review on SPOTIFY!OUR PARTNERS:Legion Supplements (protein, creatine, + more!), Shop (DANNY) HERE! Get comprehensive lab analysis of the most important biomarkers for your health from our partner Marek Health HERE (save using the code "corecoaching")Get Your FREE LMNT Electrolytes HERE! Care for YOUR Gut, Heart, and Skin with SEED Symbiotic (save with “DANNY15)  HERE! Put your nutrition on autopilot with our amazing partner CHOW meal prep HERE (save with code "danny")RESOURCES/COACHING:  Train with Danny on His Training App HEREI 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:Follow Coach Danny on YOUTUBEFollow Coach Danny on INSTAGRAMFollow Coach Danny on TwitterFollow Coach Danny on FacebookGet More In-Depth Articles Written By Yours’ Truly HERE! Sign up for the trainer mentorship HERESupport the Show.

Welcome in everybody to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. As always, I'm your host, Danny Medrenga, and that little chuckle you're hearing is me just laughing at the state of affairs I'm living in right now. answer a lot of your guys' questions about various topics that I think are exciting. I think that they're pretty nuanced. I think that they open the opportunity for us to unpack things related to fitness, nutrition, cardiovascular exercise, and even things like cosmetic surgery. We're going to talk a little bit today about the BBL or the Brazilian butt lift. But I'm laughing at first one because I thought it was interesting that I have that on the docket today. But also I am recording in my room right now. It's about 100 degrees outside and probably about 90 degrees in my room. And I'm actively sweating while I record the podcast. And the reason that I'm laughing a little bit about this is because

when I started the podcast, it was at the very beginning of the pandemic. I started it before the pandemic. And I would sweat recording because I was nervous. Now I'm not sweating because I'm nervous. I'm just sweating because I'm hot. And I thought that this would be, this was somewhat funny given that this is episode 201. So full circle there, guys. And as you're listening to this, I hope that whatever you are pursuing in life is going well for you. I'm in a period of change and transition that has a lot of things kind of thrown up in upheaval. It has me frustrated.

It has me angsty. But I am living vicariously through the meme of the man in the tunnel who has a pickaxe who's chipping away at the tunnel and the diamond is right there and he turns around at the last second and the diamond is just sitting there one swing of the pickaxe away, but he gave up too fast. I'm trying as hard as I can not to be that guy, to keep pushing and not give up and to bring you guys content like this because every single one of you who listens and subscribes and has left reviews and has come to work with me and my coaching team at core coaching method because of the podcast or

you're in my app based training community because of the podcast or you've found some of our partners through the podcast and the products that they sell have improved your life like you guys are all really awesome you guys are the reason that I do this. And I want to continue to try to add value for you each and every single day. And a lot of that comes directly from answering your questions. So if you'd like to have your question featured in an episode of the show, please, please, please follow me on Instagram, danny.matranga. Very simple. I ask questions at least once a week and I pull a lot of them from the podcast right there if I don't answer them on Instagram. So first question comes from jesse.vsg. Question is, when is the best time to do cardio before or after you lift?

So a lot of this depends specifically on the type of training you're going to be doing, and it depends on the type of cardio that you're going to be doing. So in general, the more intense the cardiovascular exercise, for example, things like HIIT training or even sprinting, which I don't consider cardio. I think it's much more anaerobic, but people classify it as cardio because it's like running based. But think about the more intense forms of cardio. Those are not a very, very good form of exercise to position before you do something more rigorous like weight training because they're very fatiguing and because the recovery cost is quite high. So if you position them after,

right, you will also in all likelihood be robbing yourself of the ability to recover from your sessions. So there are some types of sessions, particularly HIIT, sprint work, and plyometric work, which aren't aerobic training. I have got to say that a million times, but people think they are forms of aerobic training do not belong as warmups before weights or to be done immediately after a fatiguing resistance session. Those kinds of sessions should be reserved for their own days. a form of reasonable hit cardio, the kind of cardio that's pretty darn hard. It's allowed to still be very hard, but preferably it's not like performance-based sprinting or jumping. I think you'll be in a great position if you choose to do that after your upper body sessions. Things like low-intensity steady-state cardio that tend to be very, very easy to recover from, and they don't fatigue the body too much are fine as a 8 to 15

minute long cardiovascular warm-up before you lift. Those things tend to actually enhance performance. One thing though that I do think is important to bring up specifically are things like cycling and Stairmaster because they tend to be particularly fatiguing on certain musculature in the legs if you do too much of them prior to certain exercises. So too intensive cycling and too intensive stairs might fatigue you going into certain lower body training exercises. So if you are going to use those as your warm-up modalities prior to lower body specific sessions, I would dial back the intensity a lot and keep it really, really easy. All right, really fun question here from louie underscore neary. And the question is, what's your favorite slash most enjoyable lifts?

And I don't know why I love this question. It's like very rare that people ask questions specific of my training relative to what I like about it. It's more of, it's more, I would say, common. And this of course makes sense, right? Because people come to me for expertise that they ask for the rationale behind why I program the way I program, why my program looks a certain way, why did I choose this exercise over that exercise. And quite often, I have answers that I would say are very evidence-based. I have answers that I would say are not so evidence-based, but rooted in anecdote, things that I've seen over time that I think work really well for clients, whether those be clients that I work with in person or online.

And on occasion, I choose and select exercises that I think are fun, that feel good, that I enjoy, and I know this sounds conceited, but that I think have helped my body look better, but that I think have helped my body look better, uh, in irrespective of perhaps other exercises that train similar muscles that don't agree so well with me. So what I've decided to do, uh, is off the cuff here, divide my body into different body part or muscle groups and tell you which ones I like for each. So we'll start with the chest because I think that the chest tends to be my favorite muscle group to train. This is pretty common for guys and I generally find for girls it tends to be the lower body and the glutes. I think there's a few things here. I think we generally gravitate towards liking some muscle groups more than others because of a desire to either develop them or a natural proclivity to be good at them. So for example, I've always been a great presser. In high school, I was able to bench 225 at about 150 pounds for reps. Bench press came super, super natural to me. The most I've ever benched is 335. And quite frankly, that did not do my elbows any favors. I paid for that for quite a bit. But as 170 pound natural to be able to bench in the 300s

and my best volume bench PR was incline barbell bench for 10, which I was more impressed with than any of the single flat bench PR. So barbell pressing was one that I always loved for the chest. I loved it. And because I loved it, I really fell in love with chest training. So that was my favorite muscle group. But for women, I find they're more drawn to lower body specific training specifically or more commonly at the beginning of their career. And they get really good at that. So leg days become their favorites and they often have a favorite that is a leg

exercise. So obviously, you know, I like bench press a lot, but it's actually not my favorite chest exercise. Things have changed. My favorite now are cable pec flies. I love how they feel because they have a very even resistance profile and they really allow me to contract my pecs because they allow the arms to travel closer together in adduction where we bring the arms together across the body and they meet in the middle. So that stuff's really important for developing the pecs optimally and getting a good contraction. And I love a good contraction in the shortened position. So my favorite exercise for the pecs is the cable fly. For the shoulders, a bunch of options here really came to play. Shoulders aren't my favorite muscle to train, and it definitely shows on my physique. But I think my favorite exercise of all time for the shoulder has to be another cable exercise,

and it is the cable lateral raise. Nothing wrong with regular lateral raises, but I do find the more consistent resistance profile on the cable makes them feel a lot better and I get a much better pump and sensation in my deltoids. For the trapezius and the traps, the muscles of the upper back, I love snatch grip shrugs on the Smith machine. I learned to do snatch grip shrugs from Eugene Tao, coach Eugene Tao. When I went to a couple of his seminars in Southern California back in 2008, seven, 18, maybe, um, Carlsbad in one right in downtown LA. And I got the opportunity to learn from Eugene in short order in back-to-back, uh, uh, back-to-back workshop style seminars. And one of the things

that he really focused on in his teaching, and this is something that's been valuable for me, is understanding and acknowledging the angles at which muscles are running relative to how we load them. And one of the things he told me and taught me that really resonated was the conventional up and down shrug as it's done with dumbbells aligns a little bit better with the musculature of the neck and spine than it does the traps. And that to optimally or in a more efficient way train the traps, you might want to abduct or move the arms away from the body, the opposite of a cable fly, to about 30 degrees where your arms or humerus are lined up really nicely with the fibers of your upper traps.

And so I started doing snatch grip shrugs, which were awesome. And in shifting over to the Smith machine, I find I have so much less stability requirement and I don't have to worry about a barbell oftentimes brushing up against my man parts like I do with a barbell shrug. I can step back just a smidge while in that Smith machine. It makes a really, really good difference. Big difference. Not a good difference. A big difference. So that kind of takes care of the upper portion of the back. I guess you could say rear delts. I really like face pulls. For the lats, I love the chest supported single arm lat row. That's one that

I've learned from N1 Education and Coach Chasm. That's a really kick-ass exercise. Definitely feel my lats a lot on that one. But my favorite, and a lot of people hate it, I fucking love it, is the straight arm pull down. Man, oh man, do I love that one. For my back and lats, I like to use cable machines with dual cables or a little bit of a wider grip with double ropes to make sure I get a nice fat contraction and a good pump. And I'm not limited so much by the size of the cable attachment for the core or abs. Um, we'll talk just about the rectus abdominis. So this doesn't take forever. I'd have to say it's probably sit-ups on a exercise ball or yoga ball. So fucking underrated to have that contoured effect on the low back and support through the lumbar spine that allows for really good thoracic spine flexion and extension.

Just you get a killer, killer, killer contraction in your abs for hamstrings. It's got to be the Romanian deadlift specifically when I really focus on not trying to load up the weight and really just focus more on executing the movement with my hamstrings. Oh my gosh, killer every time. Taking a little break from the action here to tell you about our amazing partner, Seed. 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 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, 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, 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 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 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. 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, 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 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 drink LMNT slash coach Danny. They'll send you every single flavor in an individual packet. You can try them out completely free. Just pay shipping drink LMNT.com slash coach Danny. Get your sample pack today completely for free. Just pay shipping back to the show for glutes. It's walking lunges. I don't do any direct glue training. Uh, I have genetically a predisposition for like just hammer glutes, which I guess is like wasted. Uh, but like, damn dude, like my fucking glutes just become bakery cake shop madness. If I do a lot of direct glute training. It's out of control to the point

where it's like, oh my gosh, I don't even like going pant shopping because I have a 29 inch waist and I can't get anything around my bubble butt if I'm doing hip thrust. So I really like walking lunges because those always crush my glutes. They work so well for clients. And I think they have such great carry over to other exercises. For calves, it's standing calf raises. And for quads, it's reverse banded hack squats with a close, close second being Bulgarian split squats. That was almost my answer

for half the damn muscles of the lower body. So there you guys have it. That was a super fun question to answer. I really, really liked that one. Thanks again, Louie, for asking that one. Okay. This question comes from Gabby Sigran. She says, is it more important to hit calories or macros? Always hit macros, but always under on calories. So for body fat loss, hitting calories is the primary driver. That's really important. And some people might only want to track calories because it's easier. But here's the cool thing about tracking macros. If you track macros, you're automatically tracking calories. Now, some macros like fiber don't have a caloric value, but they

might show up in your carbohydrate total. So you might end up being like, damn, I nailed my macros, but my calories were off. A lot of fitness trackers have this glitch, error, whatever you'd like to call it, because of the non-caloric impact or the lack of a caloric impact on fiber, but the actual software using those carbohydrate totals that way. So if you get a food label and something has 25 grams of carbohydrates and 5 grams of fiber, it has 20 net carbs. Those 20 net carbs contribute 80 calories. Depending on how the software reads that, it might read it as a 25-carbohydrate dish with 100 calories from carbs. It might not necessarily be able to deduce that the fiber doesn't yield calories because sometimes these softwares are imperfect.

My general recommendation for people who want to do the absolute least is to just track calories and try to hit a certain protein total per day. But if you want to get the most out of your training and performance, you absolutely should have a macronutrient framework you're working inside to make sure you're getting enough protein, carbs, and fats. We do this for all of our clients at Core Coaching Method. It's so important to have macronutrient breakdowns for the days you train and quite frankly, the days you don't. We give non-training day macros too, because I believe if you want to get the most out of your physique, your transformation, your results, or you're just looking to get started and lose a little bit of weight, understanding the differences in metabolism for glycolytic work like resistance training and sitting on your ass

all day on a rest day and having macronutrients that are more tailored to your activity and your lifestyle and looking at yourself as an athlete and training like an athlete and fueling like an athlete and giving your body what it needs for you to be successful. I don't love to cut corners too much. And so for complete novices, I think protein and carbs works, but for people who want the most out of this damn thing, tracking your macros can make a huge, huge difference. All right. This question comes from sand stadreen, any advice for how to train with a shoulder injury? I can't do any push movements at the moment. So without knowing your exact injury, I can't say how you should train. But one thing I can say for sure, and I have the awesome benefit of having a literal in my gym

physical therapist, like my best friend is a physical therapist. We co-opened a gym studio together. He does the physical therapy. I do the strength and conditioning. It's fucking awesome. So we talk all day about this kind of stuff. And one thing that he and I have talked about ad nauseum is the positive impact of upper back training and development of the mid to upper back musculature for making these shoulders feel better and be able to train harder. If you're unable to currently press because of pain, it's very likely that you'll be able to do pulling movements like pull downs, unless we're talking about an impingement, which does seem to be exacerbated by a lot of overhead work, but like pull downs and rows and face pulls and all that kind of stuff

can be so, so valuable and so, so beneficial. And I think that they make a huge, huge difference in the long run, like the development of the upper back in overall, quote unquote, shoulder health, just having happy shoulders. So those are things that I would focus on, the development of the rear delts, low traps, upper traps, rhomboids, and especially the muscles of the rotator cuff while you work your way out of pain. Okay, this is a question that got a lot of traction on Instagram, but it is how do these women on Instagram have such tiny waists and big butts? And I want to give you guys three specific examples of how you can achieve this physique while still being reasonable and without being judgmental. So the first is many of the girls you see on Instagram with small

waists and big butts work harder than you. They're more consistent than you. They watch their diet and nutrition much more than you do, and they've done it longer than you. And while you spend your time comparing yourself to them, they are making small, tiny, incremental movements forward towards their ultimate goals while you sit back and ponder how they have what it is that they have and how they've accomplished what they've accomplished. I'll use two friends of mine as an example. This is not to name drop, but many of you guys know Catherine and Kendra Kane, the KK fit twins. Okay. They started training in the gym directly next door to the gym. I started working at after about six months at

that gym, they started coming over to the gym I was at because they were making progress. And you know what they looked like? Not the way they look today. They had good genetics, not great genetics, good genetics. And they worked their fucking ass off every day for five years. I swear I watched these two train every damn day for about closer to four years. And you want to know what they did? They trained for about an hour to an hour and a half, sometimes longer. They trained hard. They train close to failure. They spot each other. And after they finish eating, they would go to the local market many times and get very healthy, nutritious, protein, nutrient-dense food. And they would go work and they would do all the

stuff that normal people would do. This was well before they became extremely, extremely influential figures on social media. They were just doing that work, putting in that work. And they have genetics that I would say for a woman are similar to the genetics that I have as a guy. But why do I not look like the male equivalent? Well, I didn't practice what I, I was not in the gym as much training as hard. I did not have a training partner of similar size, age, and strength supporting me and pushing me. I did not have a training partner of similar size, age, and strength supporting me and pushing me. I did not take my nutrition as serious. I was up early training clients and earning money and building my career at that time and sacrificing sleep. And so one thing that

makes it possible for somebody to have a small waist and a bigger butt than you is they just outworked you. Here's the second thing, the genetic card. I've got to bring it back up here because I do think it's very, very important. Genetics are not your destiny, but having good genetics can make a huge ass, no pun intended, difference. Some women are blessed with incredible genetics and they have very small waste and a predisposition for body fat storage around the glutes. I'll use this without sounding too crass, but there are specific regions of the female body where body fat deposits are celebrated, and there are specific regions of the female body where body fat deposits are hated. They're universally disliked, and people don't like the way that it

looks and they're very self-conscious about it. Not everybody decides where their body fat deposits are going to go and some people are fortunate enough to have those body fat deposits like kind of center themselves in a few regions and they might have a physique that is just simply not achievable for the average person because you can't influence where your body fat storage happens. You can influence where and how you build muscle, but that's a very different thing altogether. The last piece is cosmetic surgery. Cosmetic surgery is very, very common, much more common than it used to be. And the most common form of cosmetic surgery when it comes to enhancement of the glutes

is the Brazilian butt lift, which is an outpatient procedure done under general anesthesia where the surgeon will take essentially a needle or a large suction form of device, perform liposuction, usually on the abdominal area, the midsection. That will make the waist look smaller. That extracted fat is then removed. It goes through a process to make sure that it's non-toxic and it's purified. And then it is re-injected into specific parts of the butt to create a shape and size enhancement effect.

And these surgeries have become increasingly common. I have seen exponentially more women who have a Brazilian butt lift at the gym. It's very obvious because you can always see a lack of development in the surrounding musculature. When you see a butt like that, you should see some form of muscular development elsewhere because it's extremely common for people who have a well-developed buttocks, whether they have a substantial amount of genetically predeposited fat on top of it, one way or another, but buttocks of that development should coincide with some glute and hamstring development. And oftentimes oftentimes you see stick legs with a butt

that looks like a diaper. And I'm not saying that's as common amongst fitness influencers as it is amongst maybe perhaps general population individuals who want to use cosmetic surgery to change how they look, which there's nothing wrong with. This is not an indictment of anybody who chooses to do that. Your body, your choice. Do whatever the fuck you want with it. chooses to do that. Your body, your choice. Do whatever the fuck you want with it. Here's the thing though. When you start selling fitness programs and highlighting your gluteal size as a reason you're an expert when it comes to fitness programs, things look a little sticky. And I won't name names, but there's plenty of influencers in the space who have very clearly had that form of surgery done. And there are a number of very famous individuals who have had that

surgery done and then who have gone on to lecture people about working harder and the benefits of fitness and activity, which always just seems super tone deaf when you've spent a bunch of money augmenting the way your physique looks. And then you turn around and sell fitness programs that might help people generate similar results, but that's not how you got yours. It's disingenuous. So that's a big reason why people look different from you. But what can you do? You can train hard. You can eat right. You can be patient. And I literally have developed a group-based training platform just for developing your glutes. I partnered with Train Heroic. So it's beautiful. It's app-based. It comes with tutorials, sets, reps, feedback, and a training community of other women with the same goals as you, and you get direct access to me and my coaches. All you got to do is go to corecoachingmethod.com,

select from the training app tab, Elite Physique, or go to trainheroic.com, type in Elite Physique, or go to the show notes, look for the link to Train Heroic, join us in Elite Physique. That'll do it for today's episode, guys. Thanks so much for tuning in and I'll catch you on the next one.