Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 206: 8 Training Intensifiers for Rapid Progress (Try These!)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome in everybody to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. As always, I am your host Danny Matrenga and today's episode is a fresh one. I want to thank each and every one of you for bearing with me over the last couple of weeks while I finalized a move. Just to give you guys a little bit of a backstory I have been finalizing the purchase of a unfinished home in California which is where I live waiting for construction to finish waiting for documents from title companies from realtors updates from builders and developers halfway through the project the developer actually switched so was a pause, which coincided with some unfortunate interest rate spikes, which actually made the cost of acquiring the home substantially more expensive. So a super, super frustrating, long winded process, but I'm super grateful to kind

Starting point is 00:00:56 of be finalizing that this week, should be finishing up the last little bit of documentation here. And then I've actually been living at the current home I've been at for 10 years. So getting ready to get everything out of that one, get it handed over to the new owner, all that stuff. So thank you all for bearing with me, enjoying the Encore episodes. This is actually episode 206. We're going to be talking about training intensifiers, actually the 215th episode of the podcast. but there were some re-airings over the last couple of weeks, which I strongly encourage you to go back and listen to. The nine training mistakes female lifters tend to make, the PCOS episodes with Lyle McDonald, the metabolism episode with Eric Trexler. These are some of the most popular episodes I've ever

Starting point is 00:01:38 done. And many of you are new listeners who weren't listening in 2020 when the podcast dropped. So go back into the library, take a deep dive and listen into those. I think you'll like them. As for the focus of today's episode, we're going to be discussing eight tactics that you can deploy within your training to enhance gains, enhance proximity to failure, enhance pump, enhance just general training quality, make sessions shorter and more efficient. These are things that I use with clients in session, with online clients when it comes to program design, in my own training all the time. Now, these don't appear in each and every training block. In fact, most of them don't appear at all because they are used sparingly, but we're going to talk specifically

Starting point is 00:02:19 about eight higher level training tactics that you can use. So some of these are intensifiers. Some of these are just generally unique ways to approach training, but I think you'll be able to get something out of them and you guys should be able to kind of just dive in without having any real issues. None of these are particularly hard to implement. So it should be exciting. None of these are particularly hard to implement. So it should be exciting. You should be able to add your training immediately. And without further ado, let's get into it because there's eight things here,

Starting point is 00:02:51 eight unique things you can do to really improve your training quality, your training efficiency, and your training intensity. So the first tactic that I like to use is the rest-pause tactic or rest- pause training. So to put this into perspective, rest pause is taking a set within, let's call it one to two reps of failure or all the way to failure, and then resting for a short period of, let's say, 10 to 20 seconds before continuing the set with the same weight for less reps. So I'll give you an example. We'll talk about using a leg extension machine. Let's say you did 10 reps at a hundred pounds. You would then take a 10 to

Starting point is 00:03:29 20 set rest. And then you would try to do a hundred pounds again for as many reps. Let's say you get four or five that increases the density. Okay. So that means within that set, you did 10 reps to failure with five more reps, close to 10 reps, close to failure with five more reps, close to failure. So you actually enhanced the number of reps you did at that harder rep range, or I should say harder load, more intense load with a short abbreviated rest. Now you can do rest pause for every set of an exercise. You can do rest pause for the final set of each exercise. You can do rest pause for the final set of one exercise. The more well trained you are, the higher training fatigue you're able to incur without being overtrained,

Starting point is 00:04:11 the more you can use this technique. But it's not something I use very often. I tend to like it for most muscle groups and I tend to like the modalities like machines, free weights and cables a little bit more than I would say something like a barbell. Like if you tried this with a barbell squat, it would be substantially more dangerous than something like a leg extension. And the risk to reward might drop precipitously. You might have a lot lower reward with a lot higher risk. But rest pause training has been around forever. I'm a huge proponent of it because I think it really helps you apply density, really get some high quality reps close to failure. And if you do rest pause just on the final set of say leg extensions, or let's say you do leg extensions as your final leg exercise,

Starting point is 00:04:56 and you do three sets and they're all rest pause. And with each rest pause, you squeeze out an extra six reps. That's an extra 18 reps close to that failure threshold that should be pretty productive. So I'm a big fan of that. And I think it lets you condense more workout intensity into less time, which with this move that I've been going through has been extremely invaluable for me because I just don't have as much time to train. Moving on to the second training tactic. This is one I use all the time in my training studio with in-person clients, with online clients, of all of the ones that we're going to talk about today, this might be the most commonly used. And this is antagonist paired set. So let's first

Starting point is 00:05:35 define what an antagonist is. An antagonist is a muscle whose action directly opposes another muscle, which would be the agonist. So you have, or not necessarily, like let's say you have the triceps, okay, which provides the, or performs elbow extension and shoulder extension. Now, then you have the antagonist, which is the bicep, which performs elbow flexion and shoulder flexion. Also a little bit of supination there, but mostly opposite muscles. Agonists might be something like, let's say the quadriceps and the psoas, which both perform some hip flexion or the gastroc or calf muscle and the soleus, the muscle underneath it. They both perform ankle flexion, dorsiflexion, right? So, those two muscles, the calves and the soleus, same function, agonists, two muscles whose actions

Starting point is 00:06:35 oppose each other would be antagonistic. And so, antagonist paired sets are pairing movements that are in direct opposition or muscle groups who are functionally opposite, meaning pairing biceps with triceps, pairing push with pulls, pairing leg extensions with hamstring curls, right? So, those are some examples from the muscular level to the actual movement type level to the actual movement level. So, those work really, really well because if I do heavy rows, my pecs are completely resting while I do that. Yes, they might be acting in some capacity, but they're not working very hard. And then when I go into dumbbell presses, the muscles I was using for rows aren't working as hard and I can

Starting point is 00:07:16 condense the amount of time used. I can focus on non-competitive exercises and that tends to work very, very well for me. I find that antagonist paired sets generally allow me to perform high quality work. I'm not ever really sacrificing. I might need to take 10% off the top, but they work really, really well. And they're great for saving time. You don't have to get sloppy. You can still have great technique. I like that the pump or the blood is really working usually back and forth between two tissues that are somewhat proximal or close to each other. Like I'm not doing squats and presses. I'm doing pushes and pulls where most of that blood is going to be concentrated in that kind of thoracic slash torso trunk area. Whereas like you might get a

Starting point is 00:08:01 little bit of a PHAS peripheral heart action system effect when you're doing upper and lower So this is generally going to be divided Hemispherically, so top half of the body. Those are going to be the antagonistic muscle groups. We would try to work with Or lower portion of the body those would be the antagonistic portion So tibialis and calf or chest and back big big fan I think you can do this with every training modality and for every muscle group. Some of these are going to be specific, but I'll make sure that we outline what types of technique, or I should say what types of equipment work best and

Starting point is 00:08:35 what muscle groups are generally going to be best targeted with each technique. So the next one is the eccentric gilding isometric or the eccentric quasi isometric. So this is probably one that you haven't heard of. Most people have not heard of this. EQIs are something that I learned from coach Eugene Teo at a workshop that I did with him in 2020. And essentially the eccentric quasi isometric involves taking a weight that's sub-maximal, so less than your max, contracting fully into the concentric position, okay? And then you have a yielding isometric where you allow that muscle to slowly lengthen, right? Maximally resisting through that lengthened range. So I'll explain with the straight arm pull down. Say your straight arm pull down exercise, you can do 120 pounds at your one rep max.

Starting point is 00:09:27 So you set it at 110 pounds. You pull it all the way down into the shortened position. So you pull until the lats are fully contracted and then you hold it there, maxing out the concentric contraction while the cable pulling up and back towards the stack fatigues you, it will pull you from the fully shortened

Starting point is 00:09:45 position to the fully lengthened position. Your job is to battle that. So using the hamstring curl as an example, the prone or lying one, you're on your stomach, you flex the hamstrings, you pull the pad towards your bum with a heavy load, and then slowly the pad starts to pull back to the fully lengthened position, but you're fighting it all the way. These sets can take one minute, two minutes, three minutes. When I did them with Coach Eugene, we did two minute EQIs that blast you. Now, what are these good for? Awesome for mind muscle connection. Awesome for getting a sweet pump. What modalities work well for EQIs? Definitely going to want to use machines and cables whenever possible here. Not going to be ideal with free weights because of the external

Starting point is 00:10:24 stability required. And then lastly, right, muscle groups that I would use this with would generally be things like, okay, I want to pump in this tissue or I want to improve my mind muscle connection in this tissue. So you can really use these sparingly. But this is a technique that very few people talk about, use or leverage in their training. And I think it's quite effective at helping people develop a mind muscle connection, particularly with muscles along the posterior chain, where I find people have a hard time visualizing them because you can't see them as easily in the mirror. So you can't see them contracting. So that mind muscle connection anecdotally seems to suffer.

Starting point is 00:11:01 Okay. Next one. This is the most common, and these are what most people would define as traditional drop sets. We're going to talk, when we get to technique number five, about the mechanical drop set, which is a little bit different. Not hugely different, but a little bit different. The mechanical drop set is mostly going to revolve around the actual biomechanics whereas traditional drop sets are just going to be load so these are super super easy to perform and they're great for again adding volume and adding density extending sets closer to failure doing more work close to failure and you can do these with tons of different modalities so you could do strip sets on a bar you could do drop sets on a bar. You could do drop sets with a cable stack. You could do running the rack drop sets

Starting point is 00:11:50 with dumbbells, meaning like, okay, I'm going to do barbell bench press for five reps at 225. When I hit my fifth rep, I'm going to rack it. I'm going to pull a plate off and then I'm going to go to failure with 135. That's a drop set. I'm running the rack with dumbbells. So three drop sets, four drop sets. I'm going to do hammer curls for 10 reps with 20 pounds, 10 reps with 15 pounds, 10 reps with 10 pounds, 10 reps with five pounds. That'd be running the rack or a dumbbells focused drop set. Hey guys, taking a break from the show to tell you about our amazing sports nutrition partner, Legion. Legion makes the best evidence-based formulas for sports performance, sports nutrition, recovery, and fat loss. I don't recommend many supplements. In fact, I think you can get the majority of

Starting point is 00:12:38 the nutrition you need from a whole foods diet. But let's be honest, many of us are either on the go and need assistance, or quite frankly, we're not going to settle for average and we want to get the absolute most we can out of our training. So Legion is the company I go to for all of my supplement staples, whether it's creatine, which I get from their product Recharge, my protein that I get from either Whey Plus or Plant Plus, two of the best tasting proteins on the market. They come in a variety of flavors and they don't have a ton of fillers and gum. Just way made from grass-fed cows from Ireland in a plant protein blend with a fully comprehensive dose of amino acids. I like to take a pre-workout. Sometimes I like it with caffeine. Sometimes I like to enjoy coffee in the morning and have my

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Starting point is 00:13:52 an amazing line, wonderful products, wonderful flavors, naturally sweetened, no dyes and colors. You can't go wrong. You can shop using the show notes below or by going to legionathletics.com and checking out using the promo code Danny. That will save you 20% and it will actually help you get two times points towards future orders, which you can use the same as cash. Pretty cool, guys. So head over to legionathletics.com and check out using the promo code Danny to save on all your sports supplement needs. Back to the show. What's going on, guys? Coach Danny here, taking a break from the episode to tell you about my coaching company, Core Coaching Method, and more specifically, our one-on-one, fully tailored online coaching program.

Starting point is 00:14:36 My online coaching program has kind of been the flagship for Core Coaching Method for a while. Of course, we do have PDF programming, and we have app-based programming. But if you want a truly tailored one-on-one experience with a coach like myself or a member of my coaching team, someone who is certified, somebody who has multiple years of experience working with clients in person online, somebody who is licensed to provide a macro nutrition plan, somebody who is actually good at communicating with clients because they've done it for years, whether that be via phone call, email, text, right? This one-on-one coaching program is really designed to give you all the support you need with custom training designed for you, whether you're training from home, the gym, around your limitations and your goals, nothing cookie cutter here, as well as easy to

Starting point is 00:15:20 follow macronutrition programs that are non-restrictive. You'll get customized support directly from your coach's email, or they'll text you, or they'll WhatsApp you. We'll find the communication medium that best supports your goals, as well as provides you with the accountability and the expertise you need to succeed, as well as biofeedback monitoring, baked-in accountability support, and all of the stuff that you need from your coach when you check in. We keep our rosters relatively small so that we can make sure you get the best support possible. But you can apply today by going over to corecoachingmethod.com, selecting the online coaching option, and if we have spots available, we'll definitely reach out

Starting point is 00:16:01 to you to see if you're a good candidate. And if we don't, we'll put you on a waiting list, but we'll be sure to give you the best shot at the best coaching in the industry. So head over to corecoachingmethod.com and apply for one-on-one coaching with me and my team today. 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

Starting point is 00:16:44 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

Starting point is 00:17:19 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. Another one that you could do, right? And this is where it varies from rest pause. Let's use that leg extension example again. Boom, I did 10 leg extensions to failure instead of taking a 20 second rest period, right? And then going immediately into my same set with the same weight, I'm going to just pull the pin out, drop it 30 to 40% and keep going without that rest pause. So drop sets are different than rest pause in that we're adjusting the working weight usually by 20 to 40%. That's the key to the drop set. You got to drop the weight enough

Starting point is 00:18:06 that your form doesn't sacrifice too much. We'll talk a little bit about that when we get to partials. But these are great for adding volume and density. You can use them with pretty much any modality and they work great for all muscle groups. I would not do drop sets very often with super complex exercises that load the spine, and I probably would stay away from them with squats and deadlifts. The next one I like, another form of drop set, is the mechanical drop set. So this does not require a direct reduction in weight, but generally what we're doing is we're working from a more complex muscle group, muscle movement, I should say a more complex motor pattern to a

Starting point is 00:18:47 less demanding, less complex motor pattern. So examples, going from a full range of motion push up as many as possible. And then instead of stopping, you just bring your knees to the ground and continue doing pushups with less cumulative weight because your knees are touching. That would be a mechanical drop set. Lateral raises, okay? Start with arms completely straight, most torque possible on the shoulder because of the longest moment arm. After you get that maxed out torque, you can't do any more with your arms straight. You bend them and you can bend them in various degrees, but let's just say you bend them into a nice little 45 degree angle. That's going to substantially reduce the length of the moment arm and the torque on the shoulder. You don't even have to drop the weight. You're just changing the exercise mechanics. Okay. So

Starting point is 00:19:34 mechanical drop sets are really, really good. They're great for beginners who are learning how to train closer to failure, who are learning what a pump feels like, who are learning what it feels like to push beyond their comfort zone. So for example, okay, we're going to do squats through a full range of motion. Give me as many as you can. And then when you can't do any more, we're going to do box squats, shorten the range of motion. That would be a mechanical drop set. So this is like a modality of training or an intensifier that I would say lends itself best to body weight, of training or an intensifier that I would say lends itself best to body weight, dumbbell and cable work. You can also do complex to regressed. So maybe something like a compound movement to a more isolated movement where you train the pecs or let's use the pecs as an example. You can do

Starting point is 00:20:18 this almost any muscle group. Let's say you do a bunch of dumbbell presses and then you immediately into a cable fly. So the dumbbell press is more compound. Okay. It's still an, uh, abduction style exercise where the arms are coming together from the midline, but it does involve a lot of delts and a lot of triceps because of the elbow, uh, extension component and the general requirements stability wise to move dumbbells through space. But boom, you go right into a cable fly. Less stability requirement, still going to be an abduction-based movement, not as much elbow flexion extension, so it's more of a pec movement. That would be a mechanical drop set. And so this is one that I really love. You can do it with any muscle group in almost any modality. Intensifier or tactic number six. This is where things get a little sticky, so I want to make sure that we really unpack these. This is partial reps or

Starting point is 00:21:10 sloppy reps. I don't want you to hear what I'm not saying. I think you should always lift with good technique through a full range of motion, being mindful of your intent and execution. But partial reps can be effective because they're almost always going to be an extension beyond failure or technical failure. You can select your exercises here like curls, tricep extensions, lateral raises. This is going to be one that's almost always better with isolation exercises. You would not want to do something like deadlifts or squats with partial reps or those past failure reps, right? You could definitely do negatives where you have somebody come and help you with the concentric, right? You're generally stronger on

Starting point is 00:21:54 the eccentric. So I can no longer raise these dumbbells on lateral. So somebody helps me through the concentric or raising portion. And then I control the lowering portion all by myself. That works really well. So partial reps can be done with a partner. They can be done solo, but you should stick to exercises that if you fail will be safe. And this is a tactic that I would generally reserve more for advanced lifters or for lifters who are doing a movement with a high degree of competency. If you can't do this movement blindfolded with your eyes closed in the middle of the night, don't do it with partials. But I think more generally, if you do some partial reps or beyond failure training on the last set

Starting point is 00:22:35 of an exercise, so you got three sets of laterals, just like with the rest pause, you can save this for that last set. You can add in a little bit more stimulus without adjusting your training time much at all. And you can get some pretty darn awesome returns from this. Moving on to number seven, this is one I love. It's pre-exhaust or pre-fatigue. And so this is taking that mechanical drop set and basically inverting it. So instead of starting with a more complex exercise, we actually start with a simpler exercise. So I'll use the bench press as an example. We want to use our triceps, chest and shoulders on this, but I want to fatigue my triceps. And so if I don't have a lot of equipment, that might be hard. So let's say I do a bunch of tricep isolation work, tricep extensions

Starting point is 00:23:23 first, and then I go into my presses. We'll even use a pushup as an example. Say I'm training from home and I want to challenge my triceps really hard. I'm going to do some lying skull crushers to fatigue my triceps, pre-fatigue my triceps. Then I'm going to go into a more advanced, more challenging movement like a pushup where I can rely on my pecs and shoulders to help out a little bit, but I'm going to continue to destroy those triceps because I fatigued them first. They will likely be the muscle that fails first on the pushup, so they will be the limiting factor, but that's the whole point when you're working with limited equipment. I do this a lot for my Home Heroes app-based training program where we implement pre-fatigue to help them get

Starting point is 00:24:05 the most out of training at home with bands, dumbbells, and body weight. Just really, really limited stuff. So I find that pre-exhaust can be a phenomenal training tool. It's so good for feeling a pump. It's awesome when you're working with minimal equipment. You can fatigue that prime mover that you're after first and then just sneak back in with something a little more compound and really finish it off. Another good example of this would be something like lateral raises to overhead press. And the last one is one that I use in a more clinical setting at my physical therapy slash personal training clinic. And that is blood flow restriction training. Now, I tend to find that this works best for joints that perform flexion and extension, meaning the elbows usually and the knees. And I use a Katsu machine that standardizes the PSI,

Starting point is 00:24:58 so I'm always getting the right amount of blood flow occluded so that it doesn't go back to the heart. So what do we do with this? A lot of people use tourniquets, but I use a machine that puts pressure around the arterial flow so less blood can get back to the heart to be oxygenated and detoxified. So as you're chasing these pumps with these compressive cuffs wrapped around these joints that are flexing and extending, so say we're doing arms, we're doing curls and extensions for triceps, or say we're doing legs, we're doing leg extensions and hamstring curls, you would wrap these all the way up at the base of your thigh, right towards the bottom of your pelvis, or right at the top of your shoulder where, you know, your biceps kind of run into that bicipital groove. So at the very bottom of

Starting point is 00:25:32 the deltoid, very top of the biceps, and you can just get a nasty pump where lactate builds up, hydrogen builds up, creatine builds up, and these byproducts of muscular contraction can be independently valuable. People can train to failure with little to no weight. Using this tactic, they can bathe their soft tissues and tendons in these uniquely beneficial metabolites. It's a great way to build up metabolic capacity to handle these metabolites that accumulate through high-intensity activity. It's great for people in that post-rehabilitative state that can't lift heavy but want to do intense training. So awesome for athletes in that regard.

Starting point is 00:26:07 I really like BFR. It really helped me heal some of the tendinopathy I was dealing with in and around my elbows from pressing too heavy early in my training career and being hypermobile. I love it. So guys, here are the eight training tactics that I really like to deploy to add intensity to my training. training tactics that I really like to deploy to add intensity to my training. Rest pause, antagonist paired sets, eccentric quasi-isometrics, drop sets with load, mechanical drop sets,

Starting point is 00:26:38 partial reps, pre-exhaust, and BFR. These are all high-level tactics, but if you learn about them and you learn how to deploy them, you will do very well. And these are things that we implement all the time with our core coaching method clients and in the core coaching method training app. So tons of things for you guys to sit with and digest. I hope it adds value to your training. If you enjoy the episode, be sure to leave me a five-star rating and review on iTunes and Spotify. That helps the podcast grow better than anything. Thanks again for putting up with my move. More podcasts coming your way. Catch you on the next one. Catch you on the next one. Hey, catch you on the next one.

Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 206: 8 Training Intensifiers for Rapid Progress (Try These!)

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