Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 202 - How to Break a Fitness Plateau (6 TIPS)

Episode Date: June 27, 2022

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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'm going to go over specifically what I believe are six things you can do if you are stuck in a rut, not making progress or you have plateaued on your fitness journey, right? I'll try to bend and tailor this to match for various different outcomes you might be trying to shoot for. So for example, it's not just going to be about fat loss. You'll also hear a little bit about performance muscle gain. I'll try to use different analogies. I will try to use different metaphors and comparisons so that this becomes as complete and holistic a discussion about how to get through a rut or a just dead period or tired period or burnt out period in your training. So number one, and I think that this is the most important question that you can ask as

you become more advanced in your lifting career, right? Many of you have probably been lifting, training, exercising in some capacity for quite some time. And you're very familiar with your routine. You probably have exercises that you enjoy, exercises that you don't enjoy. And you probably do by and large, very similar style workouts each and every session. There's some structure there. Maybe you're super advanced and you have a coach who's actually doing the programming for you to make sure you get some variety and you're making some progression, right? But for those of you who fall into that camp, it's really important to ask yourself the question before you assume you've

plateaued or before you've assumed you've reached your genetic potential, ask yourself, are my results stopping completely? Are they stagnating? Or have I truly just slowed down because I've been lifting for quite some time? So a lot of your gains will be front loaded. And this goes for every single one of you, whether your goal is fat loss, whether your goal is muscle gain, you'll probably see quite a bit early on in the process. Now, if you're just starting out, losing weight can take some time because you'd usually acquire more muscle. You get a little bit of extra glycogen or carbohydrate stored in the tissue. You're a little bit more hydrated, right? So that can kind of skew things. But in general, you lose weight fastest early on in a diet. You gain muscle the most quickly at the beginning of your resistance training career.

And the longer you've been losing weight, the more it slows down. The longer you've been building muscle, the more it slows down. And even for performance, well, a lot of the earliest time in a performance, athletes or just anybody who's looking to improve a performance metric. A lot of the early period where progress isn't happening is due to just acquisition of the skill. So for example, sprinting, you've got to learn how to sprint golfing. You need to learn how to make good contact consistently. Uh, you know, there are various bottlenecks. Like you can only be so good at golf until you have the swing of the skill or the skill of the swing, right? So once you have that, then the progression curve explodes. So it's a little

bit slow out of the gate, but you usually will pick up more steam early on and you'll have diminishing marginal returns down the road. So you have to consistently remind yourself that there's a very good chance you have not plateaued, only that your results have slowed down. And if they have slowed down, there's a number of things you can do. But my first tip for you, if your results have slowed down, is to stop doing the same thing, expecting different results. I want you to think about that for a second. This is obviously something that you can apply to your personal life, but we'll try to stay relatively humble here. And I'm not going to go on some large scale breakdown of how you need to get outside of your comfort zone to expand into the person you ultimately want to become. No, we'll keep it about fitness. I think that's fair. If your training is always at or around the level of your comfort and you're going through the motions, maybe it's because you're overtrained.

Maybe it's because you're super stressed. Maybe it's just because that's become the habit. You might not even be experiencing stagnation or slowdown as a result of your tenure or time in the gym. It might just be that the intensity or the way in which you're approaching your sessions or you're approaching your dietary diligence might have just faded over time and you need to check back in with yourself. So many people, when they ask me about being in a plateau, appear to be asking from a place of like desperation, like, oh my gosh, my results have completely stopped. Which is to say like, you know, that's reasonable, but have they stopped because you're long in the training career? Okay, nothing you can do about that. Or have they stopped because you've gotten into a rut and you're not training harder,

approaching your training with the same intensity and enthusiasm that you used to. And more often than not, it's the second. I often tell people, well, when was the last time you had a workout where you were just going through the motions and you weren't really present? And a lot of times the answer is like, oh, last week or, oh, gosh, all the time. And so don't get caught in that trap. So that's the first tip. Identify whether you've just slowed down. Identify whether or not perhaps this plateau is as a result of having been training a long time or maybe just not training quite hard enough or as hard as you were when your results were where you want them to get or when we're at a pace or you were acquiring these skills

or getting better at the rate you used to. All right. So number two, you've heard me harp on this before many times, but if at any point your fat loss slows, your muscle growth seems to plateau or stagnate, you're not recovering as well from performance sessions or performing well, maybe even feeling irritable or run down at work. And like a lot of us are looking to perform in other areas of our lives. We're not just looking to perform in the gym. We're looking to perform at home with our families, at work with our colleagues or coworkers, depending on the type of business you're in. I know especially many of you who are like myself, you fall into that camp of entrepreneur, like you're a business owner, like somebody like myself

who has a brick and mortar facility where I see clients and I have, you know, strength and conditioning coaches with their clients, physical therapists with their patients. And then I have the podcast and then I have the app community. And then I have the clients who I see in person and the clients that I work with online. Like that is somebody who I would say is managing many different things. And I'd fall into a classification of probably somebody who wanted to perform well often, right? It's very important. If you want to perform well in the gym, in life, I truly, I think sleep has got to be up there. So if you have noticed a slowdown in any of the areas you're looking to perform, I, and I quite mean, literally mean like you can use work as a

barometer here too, just like, because your fat loss stalled, you know, you're not gaining muscle as easily. You're not performing as easily. Those aren't the only things you can look at. You can look at your mood, right? But if you are not getting adequate sleep around seven to nine hours a night, you are going to be leaving substantial opportunity to recover, to make results, to make progress on the table. And I know not everybody's in a

position where they can just go from their current sleeping schedule to seven to nine hours. I am not trying to tell you that this is something that you have to do. And I would never tell you that if you can't do this or aren't doing this, you don't want it bad enough. That's not reasonable. It's not realistic. The point here is that seven to nine hour range appears to be connected to these optimal performance outcomes. Does that mean you need to get seven to nine hours? No. What it means is the closer you get to seven to nine hours, the more likely it is you can get close to optimization. Many of us will never reach optimization. We'll never lose fat perfectly. We'll never build muscle as fast as possible

with constant acceleration and minimal slowdown. We'll never go from being a shit golfer to PGA tour, right? Not all of us are just going to be perfect all the way through. I certainly can't, and I don't expect that in my clients. And after having worked with so many people, I think that shooting for perfection is ridiculous. However, sleep and aiming to get a little bit more than you currently are, if you're below that seven to nine hour mark, seems to be the most effective thing you can do if your results have slowed or stagnated. I think that's really important too, is look at these things in a hierarchy. A lot of people will instantly look to supplements and we're going to talk about those next because I do think that filling some nutritional deficiencies can be really, really valuable.

But supplements will never be more valuable than adequate amounts of sleep. Even the best, most effective supplement protocol, short of steroids, right? I don't think that can even come close to impacting performance the way the right amount of sleep can. So when looking to optimize your performance, looking to optimize your body composition, your fat loss, your muscle growth, right? Even your performance at work, none of these things can be influenced more with the exception of like maybe deep focus. Like I might argue that, well, no, cause that's, it's not a steroid, but it's a pharmaceutical, right? Like I think steroids could help you overcome poor sleep. And the same way that I think you like Adderall can help you overcome poor cognitive performance or nicotine could help you overcome poor cognitive performance.

I'm not a doctor. Don't listen to anything I'm saying, but, but those are short-term quick fixes or they create a dependence and reliance. So you aren't on honestly going to be starting steroids. You're not honestly going to be putting nicotine patches on and chewing nicotine gum to have more energy at work What you can do probably most reasonably is get a little more sleep That is going to be a huge ass difference maker and many people do try to Find workarounds and find ways that they can sleep less and there have been periods in my life as an entrepreneur Where I have had to sleep less. I can tell you right now, I'll use myself as an example. My physique is probably the best it's ever looked. I'm training between three to four days a week.

I am not sleeping well. But I think part of the reason why I am okay is because my training is very hard and progressive. I'm working my butt off in there and I'm not overdoing it. I'm actually training less than I ever have and I'm making more progress deep into my training career because I have found a way or been forced to calibrate the number of sessions to my schedule. So I've gotten over my own neurotic tendency to kind of over train or train because I'm already at the gym. When you're training people, it's really easy to just want to get in a session.

of over-train or train because I'm already at the gym. When you're training people, it's really easy to just want to get in a session. Oh, I got an hour to kill in between this meeting or, oh, this client missed the call or missed the session because of some crazy thing. And you get a session in, right? I think in large part around six and a half, seven hours is what I've been getting closer to four to five this week, but six and a half to seven. So imperfect with less sessions than normal, but just enough to recover. I'm doing fine. And I think sleep is a huge, huge thing for you guys here. It's going to be something very important. And we will talk about supplements here as we transition away from sleep, but if you can get more than you are. All right. Number three, you've reached some form of stagnation with performance, with fat loss, with muscle growth. There are a number of things that I believe can help with all of these. And I think they all help

for different reasons. We'll start with protein powder. Supplementing with adequate dietary or with protein can help you hit your dietary protein intake goals. You do not need a protein shake to get enough daily protein. Let me reiterate that. You do not need a protein shake to get enough daily protein. Let me reiterate that. You do not need a protein shake to get enough protein. You also do not need to take whey protein. You also do not need to take collagen protein. You also do not need to take vegan protein. You can take a variety of different proteins to elevate the total daily intake of dietary protein that you get. And you're probably better off taking whey if you want muscle growth, adding collagen in if you want soft tissue remodeling.

Maybe you're an athlete and you want a little bit of juice for the tendons and ligaments. I've heard people communicate that. Some people I really respect seem to think that that can help. One way or another, if you're vegan, you can take the plant-based stuff. One way or another, it's probably going to help you to get enough protein and the protein supplement is a phenomenal way to do it If your goals are fat loss more protein helps you stay full so you can like replace a meal with a protein shake and a Piece of fruit if your goals are muscle gain and you're really dialed on your nutrient timing You might position some protein around your workout and even across your day So you have equal protein feedings of about four times a day. If your goal is performance, I know a lot of young athletes typically gravitate towards

food. So like high school, college athletes, people preparing for races, various things, they tend to gravitate towards foods that are higher in calories to offset their energy demands from their sports. So things that are higher in carbs and fats, and they don't always get enough protein. So a shake can help there too. And these things will help you if you are protein deficient, you're not going to be making progress. You need protein for all three of those goals. 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

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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. 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 element tea 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 element tea.com slash coach Danny. Get your sample pack today completely for free. just pay shipping. DrinkLMNT.com slash Coach Danny. Get your sample pack today completely for free. Just pay shipping. Back to the show. The number two thing I think that can help you, not in that protein, not in the way protein can, I guess if you were deficient in this thing, but I think it can really help is creatine. I think for anybody who's in a calorie deficit looking to lose fat, creatine can help you continue to perform in that deficit at a better rate than you probably would without it, in my opinion. For muscle growth, it's a no-brainer. You know creatine helps with performance, recovery,

and hydration within the muscle. For performance, it's a no-brainer. It helps a variety of different power metrics. The cognitive literature that's emerging is really, really exciting, and it could even help you perform and work. We talked a little bit about how sleep can do that for those of you who are high performers, entrepreneurs, heads of households. If you've got multiple kids running around, you're managing different schedules, you're super mom, whoever you are, if you want to perform at your best and you're an otherwise healthy person with no outstanding issues, particularly liver kidneys, I think creatine could be really beneficial. It

is expensive now, much more expensive than it used to be because so many people are taking it, but very much helpful for breaking through a plateau or stagnant training if you have not supplemented with creatine before. Another thing that I think can lead to performance stagnation or stunting is micronutrient deficiencies. So vitamins and greens powders can help with that. They are far from perfect. You're better off eating more fruits and vegetables, but I know many people have a hard time practically doing that. And then the last thing that I think can help is an omega-3 supplement. You can get this from fish oil. You can get this from algae oil, krill oil. Omega-3s seem to be heavily correlated with various markers of

longevity. They can help with reducing inflammation. I've even seen data that shows they help with muscle growth. And keeping that ratio of omega-6s and omega-3s in check by sprinkling a few extra milligrams of omega-3 in your day in supplemental form can really help. So yes, supplements can help if you are stuck or stagnating or slowing down. The ones that seem to help the most that are not pharmacological or drugs are protein powders, creatines, vitamins, greens, fish oils, and then occasionally small little things that one might throw in there to address individual deficiencies. I find that the addition of things like magnesium, potassium, and electrolyte form can be really

helpful. Things like probiotics, if it's something like our partner Seed who makes a high quality probiotic, I think that can be additionally helpful. But that's more for health. These are things that if your health is out of alignment, you can expect to optimize your fitness results. But some of these things like fat loss and performance, you'll always have to sacrifice some of your health. Anyway, moving on to the fourth thing you should consider if you are trying to break through a training plateau is to make sure that you are following some kind of structured program designed to generate the outcome and results that you want. Don't just follow some random, Don't just follow some random, strange, amalgamation, consortium, puzzle piece,

thrown together Instagram workout. I like this move from this girl's page. I like this move from this guy's page. I like this, but I'm going to do all these things. Follow a progressive program. It's probably going to be repetitive. It's going to become less complicated with each week. As you learn the movements, you'll be either doing more volume or more intensity or adding in various rates of progression. Simplify your program so it looks like more of the same shit and gives you opportunities to get better. But don't simplify it so much that you're only ever doing the things you like over and over and over again. We talked a little bit about that in question one, but get on a progressive program. That's why I have app based programming, guys. That's why I have app-based programming guys. That's why we offer coaching consultations and programming consultations. And that's why we

offer full-blown online coaching where we take over everything, write it exactly how you want it. And we'll, how we think it's going to need to be put together to help you get to the goals you want based on the equipment you have, your situation, your lifestyle. But please stop just going to the gym and doing the shit that you like. That is an awesome, awesome thing for the general population. For anybody who is not moving enough, that is so, so, so good. Just go and move. I would never discourage movement. But if you're really serious about your results, if you really are serious about losing body fat, about building muscle, about enhancing your performance for sport. There's a few small things you can do specific to your programming, how you hold yourself accountable

to getting your movement in. Fat loss, this is much less important. The most important thing, I believe, is nutrition. Training should supplement that, but it doesn't have to be as regimented. But for those of you with muscle growth goals, for those of you with strength goals, performance goals, get on a program that challenges and progresses you, not just a program that you kind of piece together yourself where you repeat the same moves you like over and over again for the reps that you're comfortable doing and not pushing it. Okay. Something else you can do to break a plateau. This is number five is adjust the training stimulus for a short time. So you can resensitize. I do this kind of oscillating resensitization in how I approach programming for home heroes, for elite physique,

for online clients, where we alternate between blocks where we have various focuses. So if you're a hypertrophy client, for example, I might have a moderate to low rep block where we work on strength development followed by two back-to-back hypertrophy blocks at intermediate rep ranges that focus more on mechanical tension and then maybe one that's shorter and focuses more on metabolic stress. For fat loss clients, I often oscillate or go back and forth between strength and hypertrophy blocks where we focus on strength, functional strength acquisition, things that I think would be beneficial for just any human being, and muscle growth, working on the development of tissue because I think that muscle growth is a longevity organ. And when you're

working to lose fat, like nutrition is so damn important. Your training can really be whatever you want, but that's just my training philosophy that I think doing more hypertrophy, bodybuilding style, weightlifting, strength development, you know, postural, postural, uh, fortification, whatever you want to call it work. I think that shit's badass. That's how I approach training. That's my philosophy as a trainer. You can do whatever the hell you want, but every once in a while, things get stale and you don't notice it because you're in a routine and that stops you from making progress. So don't be afraid to change things up and get a little bit of resensitization to occur. When you go back to that old stimulus, good things might happen.

I've heard various different coaches and science communicators lean into the idea of allowing resensitization to occur to a stimulus that the body has become desensitized to, meaning you've done it for so long, the amount of adaptation you can get out of it at this point is almost maxed out. Going away from it for a while

might allow for better returns on future endeavors in that same category or style of training. That's my two cents on. The last thing, guys, this is a big one. Number six is include exercises that are new every once in a while that offers some less steep progression curves, right? So a lot of you love the same exercises and you do them all the time. And I do this with every client and I do this myself. This is important. You don't want to always be going away from the basics, like the squats, the deadlifts, the various hinges, you know what I mean? Various forms of rowing and pushing and pressing, even some of the more isolation-based movements that have been around for a while in the resistance training community are there because they fucking work

and they're bad-ass and you should always do them. But occasionally rotating different accessory exercises in that you're not already good at that. In fact, you suck at, but over the course of a block you get really good at them. Those can actually fill in weak points and holes. And by, by that, I mean like if you only ever train biceps in the shortened position, you only ever train hamstrings on lengthened position because you do seated hamstring curls only and you only do like spider curls. I'm realizing now I probably should have picked

something different than hamstrings and biceps. But then say you switch to a lying ham curl and an incline curl and lying ham curl for hamstrings, incline curl for biceps. Well, now you're biasing different portions of the contractile range. You might get better hypertrophy. Let's say for fat loss, you've been doing a lot of high rep work and machine work. And all of a sudden you're going to try training, um, heavier and more power lifting style. Cause you're doing fat loss. You can drain however the hell you want really. Um, the inefficiencies you have around fat law, uh, around strength training will probably make that form of exercise quite more, quite demanding. Like if you never swim, swimming is quite demanding, uh, more demanding than it is for a swimmer. So there might be some advantage there, but if nothing else, it helps

inject some novelty and keep things going. Cause you know, for people who aren't, you know, dead fast, dead fast on becoming bodybuilders or power athletes or strength athletes or, or athletes in skilled specific sports like baseball, football, basketball, they don't want to live in the gym. They might not love training a little bit of novelty here and there can be effective. And then for athletes, one thing I've noticed always is they tend to love to gravitate towards the shit they're already good at and away from the stuff they need to work at. And it's usually the athletes who work on their weaknesses that end up taking things to the highest level. So guys, there you have it. Those are my six tips for breaking a plateau. The first thing is identify whether or not you're actually in a plateau. Second tip,

get enough sleep. The third tip is going to be take the right supplements. There's five specifically that we recommended here that I think can help universally. Number four, please follow a program specific to the adaptations you're looking to accomplish, not just something random from the internet. Number five, do not do the same things every time you are in the gym, never changing for months, weeks, years on end. And number six, don't avoid training your weak spots. Throw certain exercises in with your accessory work or just every once in a while to keep it fresh, fun, and novel. That's my two cents on it, guys. Thank you so much for listening.

I really appreciate each and every one of you who continues to subscribe. If you guys would like to help the podcast continue to grow, the fastest and most effective way to do that is to just leave a quick one to two minute review on Spotify, on iTunes, wherever you listen to your podcasts, a quick review makes a big difference. Thanks for listening, guys. I'll catch you on the next one.