Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 212: The TOP 5 Cuisines for GAINS! Refeeds, soreness + MORE!

Episode Date: August 16, 2022

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome, everybody, to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. As always, I'm your host, Danny Matrenga, and in today's episode, we're going to be going over five of my favorite cuisines for eating out and expanding your kind of healthy lifestyle or the lifestyle you have with food beyond the confines of the kitchen. So many people in the health and fitness community enjoy cooking their own food. They're very mindful of what it is that they're eating, but they want to branch out. Or they're somebody who loves food and wants to find ways to incorporate healthier cuisines and healthier restaurant options into their routine. So we'll talk a lot about food today. I'm also going to be answering some of your questions specifically to how to know when you should have
Starting point is 00:00:45 a refeed, how to know when it's time to start lifting weights if you've already been active, but where do you start if you're looking to incorporate resistance training? This would be good for anybody who's listening, who's trying to integrate that into somebody who care about life. Maybe they're not active yet, but you'd like to encourage them to get more active. And then we'll talk a little bit about how much soreness is too much soreness and what you might be able to do to manage and kind of take care of that. So again, ranking the top five cuisines, as well as talking a little bit about my favorite dishes, what makes these cuisines so good, and answering your questions. But before we do that, I actually wanted to take some time to say thank you for leaving so many awesome reviews for the podcast. For me, it's a really big deal. Whenever you guys
Starting point is 00:01:35 take the time to write a review and leave a five-star review, especially on Apple and Spotify, these make a huge difference. They help the podcast grow. They help it rank better. They help it pull up better in search. It's really the lifeblood of growing a podcast organically. And I give my time to you guys on this because one, it's good for my business. It's great to interact with you guys. I really, really enjoy creating the podcast and making sure that you guys have content from me that goes a little deeper than what we generally would get on social, like Instagram, TikTok, et cetera. But really, it's driven by you guys. And thankfully, I have awesome sponsors like Legion, Seed, LMNT, Underdog, all these really, really cool sponsors that help support the show. But most of this is just my time given to you. You guys listen,
Starting point is 00:02:20 and you leave me amazing feedback like this that makes the whole thing possible. So I wanted to share some reviews from the iTunes store. Actually, these are just from Chartable, so these could be from Spotify as well. But this one comes from Sterling B. Sterling says, as a fitness coach, I appreciate the topics Danny discusses in each episode. It makes me think about fitness and wellness in more ways. This is a must listen. Sterling, thanks a lot. And thanks a lot to all the trainers who take the time to listen to this. I know that personal training and fitness coaching can be a really competitive space with a lot of ego and to listen to anybody talk or to go out and seek anybody's advice or expertise is awesome. So whenever I hear another fitness coach is
Starting point is 00:03:00 listening to this, and I know I've been doing it a long time and I know I know my shit, but look, it's always flattering and I really appreciate that one. So thank you for that one, Sterling. This one comes from Morgan and this one says, great podcast that comes out multiple times a week, but isn't going to take all day to listen to. Useful info for all levels of fitness. Love that he does Q&A episodes and takes the questions straight from his IG. Thanks, Danny. Thank you, Morgan, for this really, really good review. I like that you like the bi-weekly podcast. I'm working on ramping up from two to maybe even three times a week, guys. The podcast downloads have really gone through the roof since I started going to a two-time, three-time-a-week frequency,
Starting point is 00:03:39 and I'm really, really excited about that. So I'm going to try to keep it up for you. I'm going to do the absolute best I can. And this last one comes from Sarah J. Sarah says, keep up the great content, Danny, a rarity and much appreciated gem of a podcast with the oversaturation of coaches out there regurgitating the same Instagram tips. Thanks for helping us take our training and nutrition to the next level with your podcast and these golden nuggets interspersed in each episode. Thank you, Sarah. And again, thank you to each and every one of you who has taken time at any point to read or write, I should say reviews for me to read on the podcast, but to write reviews, leave five-star reviews. They really help this thing grow. And if you haven't yet, go ahead and leave one. It takes
Starting point is 00:04:18 one to two minutes. There's a link in the show notes, or you can just scroll down right there on Apple. That's where most of you listen, according to my podcast server. It shows me that most of you listen on iTunes and on your iPhone in North America. Although there are a surprising amount of international listeners and sometimes I pop up on trending charts. Good thing I didn't say trending charts,
Starting point is 00:04:39 but trending charts in other countries that I would not imagine anybody would ever listen to. So thank you for that. And speaking of other countries, I think that's a really gentle, nice segue into talking about and ranking my five favorite cuisines for eating healthy, finding nutritious food while eating out protein-centric food. And I'm also going to be sharing with you my favorite dish from each of these cuisines. So we'll talk about what makes them good. We'll talk about why I like them, what makes them unique. We'll rank them from five down to one, and then we'll get into your
Starting point is 00:05:13 questions. So number five on the list is Spanish food. And full disclosure, I am a Spaniard. I have Spanish DNA. So there is a little bit of bias here, but I really do think that Spanish food is unique. And again, I'm going to try to pick cuisines for the most part that I don't think people go and have all the time. So typical American cuisines or more popular cuisines like Chinese and Italian, I might be leaving out because those are kind of staple fixtures in American culture, and American cuisines includes things like California-style food as well as barbecue. So trying to expand the repertoire a little bit for you guys to help you blend social life and
Starting point is 00:05:55 eating out and enjoying what food has to offer with your fitness lifestyle wherever you're at. So many of these foods and cuisines will be good if your goals are building muscle, if your goals are fat loss, if your goals are eating in a more nutritious fashion. So we'll unpack them all slow. It'll be fun. But starting with five, Spanish food. I love Spanish food because one, most of the dishes have a lot of protein, a lot of fish. You see a lot of peas. Sometimes you see beans. There's a lot of unique herbs, spices, colors. You'll often see things like turmeric or saffron. So you see these beautiful reds. There's a lot of olive oil and a lot of olives. And one of the things that makes Spanish food particularly unique is it's very common to see tapas or small plates in Spanish
Starting point is 00:06:38 restaurants, which for those of you who are looking to lose body fat, but want flavorful calorie friendly food, I have got to say Spanish food is up there because of tapas. Tapas are awesome, awesome, awesome for getting a variety of different foods and flavor profiles in front of you without the massive, wildly oversized American portions that we're all used to. If you ever hang out or spend time with people who are in America from other countries or have spent time in other countries, they will notice the difference in portion sizes here in America. In addition to flavor and freshness and taste, people oftentimes look at portion sizes as being a big selling point for different restaurants and different cuisines. People like generous portion sizes.
Starting point is 00:07:22 It's what we're used to, and Americans love to not just eat, but overeat. And I find that this tends not to be as much of an issue in Spanish cuisine because of the general popularity of tapas-style Spanish food here in America. So if you want protein-centric small plates that pair well with things like wine, which personally I don't drink, but I understand people like to enjoy that when they go out. I think Spanish food is great and it's a great date spot. It's a great fun cuisine to have. If you like Mediterranean food, if you like olives, fish, rices, Spanish is a great option, especially if you're looking for something new. My favorite Spanish dish is paella, which is a seafood kind of prepared dish with usually vegetables, particularly things
Starting point is 00:08:07 you'll see often like tomatoes, rices. You'll sometimes see it done with chicken, but it's usually done with a dish medley like scallop, whitefish, clam, shrimp. Really, really tasty. Love me some paella. And if you're looking to lose body fat, you could always do more or less rice to just limit the overall number of carbohydrates, but more importantly, calories. Paella is my go-to, my favorite Spanish food. Number four on the list is Thai food. So of the conventional foods, conventional Asian foods that we think of in America, I believe Chinese is still the most popular, Japanese a close second, Thai food probably
Starting point is 00:08:43 third. Now, I know a lot of people who aren't particularly big fans of Japanese and Thai food. Chinese food tends to be universally fairly popular, but these are gaining popularity. But Thai food specifically is one that I really, really like. Of all the foods on this list, I do think it is either the most or second most vegetable-centric, meaning you will see a lot of vegetables in popular Thai food options. For example, curries, some of the most popular Thai dishes, which are usually made with coconut milk, various spices that impart these beautiful red, yellow colors.
Starting point is 00:09:17 You'll oftentimes see things like pumpkin curries. You'll oftentimes see things like peas, carrots, and potatoes featured in these, which are very fibrous and some peas contain protein too. And chicken, like those are the kind of primary dishes. There's tons of things added to them, like bean sprouts, peas, like I said already, carrots, potatoes, peas, so many things included in there and amazing spices that you'll see featured throughout the entire library of Thai cooking. Things like turmeric, lemongrass, ginger, coriander, really nutritious herbs, spices, and flavors that are hard to get other places. There's also a lot of garlic and onions, which we talked about on a recent episode, the allium family, pretty nutritious, very, very flavorful. The condiments can be a little bit fat-centric. You will often see a lot of peanut
Starting point is 00:10:06 sauces and oil-based sauces, which might not be ideal, but tons of healthy options in Thai cooking. Another thing I love about Thai is it's generally prepared very fresh. I find most Thai restaurants prepare things fresh, and I find good Thai restaurants in every city I go to. That versatility is huge if you're traveling and looking for something that's pretty quick and easy, and I find good Thai restaurants in every city I go to. That versatility is huge if you're traveling and looking for something that's pretty quick and easy and I find it really holds well to go. Of all the options on this list, I think this is right up there with number two in terms of how well it travels if you need to get something on the go or you're looking for something quick. My favorite Thai cuisine, if I'm on the healthy side, tends to be green papaya salad and some kind of curry, usually a yellow curry, a chicken yellow curry, because I know I'm going to be getting that beautiful turmeric.
Starting point is 00:10:56 I'm getting a little bit of rice. I'm getting peas, carrots, and potatoes, as well as a generous serving of chicken. Now, if I'm just looking to enjoy what it is that I'm eating and I'm looking for my kind of go-to favorite thing, it's going to have to be chicken pad thai. I love the thai noodle dishes. I think they're wonderful. And if you compare them to some of the other noodle dishes, they can be a little more calorie friendly. But again, almost every single thai dish is going to come with some combination of either chicken, pork, usually you see a lot less pork, chicken, beef, shrimp, pork. You'll find protein featured throughout the food. And I just think it's one of the best.
Starting point is 00:11:36 And of the Asian foods, like I said, I think it's trending in its popularity. But still, I know a lot of people who've never had Thai food. So if you're looking to expand that way, got to try some Thai food. Warning for you there though, you might notice the usage of certain peppers and spices to be quite potent. So if you are asked mild, medium, spicy, or Thai spicy, do select mild and work your way up. It's always like a haircut when it comes to spice. You can always do a little more, but if you do too much at once, you're going to pay the price. Number three on the list, another heritage plug here. And this is a unique one. I find very few
Starting point is 00:12:15 people have also tried this. And that is Greek food. I am a huge, huge fan of Greek food, not just because of the olives and the olive oils and the fish and the protein, but you find a lot of salads, a lot of low fat, high protein cheeses, a lot of yogurt, a lot of lower fat, higher protein condiments like tzatziki. You see a huge focus on vegetables and salad and a lot of protein. Of all of the food libraries, meaning if you were to look at the entire kind of common menu, the aggregate of all the menus from all the restaurants that can prepare these cuisines, I think Spanish and Greek would be the two that are generally the most quote-unquote clean. Unless you're getting things like pita, and you'll often find gyro, which are not even
Starting point is 00:13:03 that bad. There's usually a lot of protein and vegetables in gyros, but unless you're getting like pita and hummus or french fries and hummus, which you can get at a lot of Greek restaurants, particularly one of my go-tos, Nick the Greek, a little semi-fast food Greek option here in the Bay Area, you're going to find a ton of veggies, a ton of protein, and a ton of really, really good options. My go-to for Greek food is kebabs. You can find a lot of kebabs in Greek cooking. Lamb is quite common. There seems to be a Middle Eastern influence or almost like a Lebanese influence within Greek cuisine. But those kebabs with a nice Greek salad on the side with feta cheese and that beautiful Greek vinaigrette is amazing, very
Starting point is 00:13:43 calorie friendly and very, very tasty. And if I was looking for more calories, I probably would add some pita and hummus because pita and hummus are amazing. Moving on to number two and number one, the reason that these two came out ahead isn't necessarily because I like the libraries that much more, the total options of food, or I think they're any healthier. The reason these two took number one and number two are for two reasons, popularity and versatility. Popularity in that there are a ton of restaurants for both of these typings, and they're generally quite popular with most people. So having these options and knowing what
Starting point is 00:14:21 to do in these situations is probably the most applicable to most people. And there's a lot of options and a lot of versatility in both of these menus that I think is great. Hey guys, taking a break from the action to tell you about one of our favorite new sponsors, Underdog Fantasy. If you're like me, you love sports. Sports was actually how I got into fitness in the first place. And one of my favorite things to do when I'm not working out or working with my clients is watch and engage in sports with my friends. Underdog is the best fantasy sports app out there for best ball and for pick'em. If you like football, basketball, baseball, hockey, soccer, WNBA, UFC, boxing, Underdog has something exciting for you. You can bet on your favorite teams. You can bet on your favorite players in the easiest and simplest way to engage
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Starting point is 00:16:33 and you can go to the app store today download underdog enter the promo code danny and they will match your first deposit up to a hundred dollars You'll have a blast playing underdog all season long. Back to the action. 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
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Starting point is 00:17:56 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. 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 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.
Starting point is 00:18:41 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 Whey 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 pre-workout later without caffeine. Legion makes both. Both the pre-workout with caffeine and without come with a full dosage of clinically effective ingredients like beta alanine,
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Starting point is 00:20:03 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. So number two on the list has got to be Mexican. I know what a lot of you are thinking. Mexican food's not healthy.
Starting point is 00:20:20 It's all oily and fatty and so high in calories and cheese and this and that. And yes, there are no shortage of Mexican dishes and Mexican foods and Mexican drinks that contain a lot of calories. But there's also no singular food type that has more versatility than this one right here, which is of course Mexican. You have got tons of options. There are ceviches, which are literally just fish basically cooked with squeezed citrus. The acid kind of cooks it. You have things like mocajete. You see a lot of fish. You see a lot of shrimp. You have tacos, which can be prepared with one or two tortillas that are mostly protein. You have enchiladas and tamales, which are usually loaded with protein. Yes, they bring a lot of chips and salsa to the table, and that's probably suboptimal if you're snacking
Starting point is 00:21:10 on those things all the day, all the time with the calorie counts. Yes, the beer and the margaritas can rack up fast, but there are a lot of really, really calorie-centric, calorie-friendly options. If your goal is to bulk and build muscle, oh my goodness, things like burritos and taquitos, they can really rack it up. So great option for that too. But you'll see protein in almost every dish. You see chicken, you see fishes, you see shellfishes, shellfish and fish, not fishes, that's not a word. You'll see beef, you'll see beans and rice, which make a nice combination of amino acids, so you can at least get something from plant-based. I really, really like that Mexican foods like fajitas are pretty much basically just seasoned vegetables grilled with protein. Some of the options are
Starting point is 00:21:54 so ridiculously clean and easy that you could literally go out to Mexican probably seven nights a week. And as long as you're not drinking, pick a different option and still lose weight. There's so many weight loss friendly options at Mexican that I think it just gets a kind of an unfair reputation for being overly, quote unquote, fattening and overly high calorie. I think there's a lot of good options and versatility when it comes to Mexican food. My favorite Mexican food when I am eating eating quote unquote, whatever I want would probably be birria tacos, which are sometimes made with goat. I hear in America, they're usually made with beef. I like them with beef. Uh, but if I'm looking to, you know, be a little bit more on the healthy
Starting point is 00:22:36 side, love fajitas. And I'm a big fan of street tacos with just one tortilla instead of using two moving to our final option on the list, guys, number one, this might not surprise too many of you, but it is Japanese cuisine. Now, this includes poke, this includes ramen, and of course, this includes sushi, but I am a huge fan of Japanese cuisine because it features so many fatty cold water fish. And not only are those fish high in protein, but they also come packed with wonderful omega-3 fatty acid. And there is very few places you can get more omega-3 fatty acid than salmon, which is featured all the time in Japanese cooking. Whether it's in poke or whether it's in sushi, you can get access to wonderful, wonderful fatty protein-rich salmon, as well as other
Starting point is 00:23:26 protein-rich fish like tuna or like yellowtail. There's also amazingly unique things thrown in the mix like avocado, which is also featured in Mexican cooking, very nutrient-dense, and cucumber, which is high in fiber, and salmon roe, which contains more of the omegas, all the different fishes, the various sauces. Of course, you have things like ramen, which are not quite so calorie friendly, but can oftentimes feature unique dishes or unique flavors. I should say unique vegetables like mushrooms and root vegetables. You can find some fun stuff in ramen. Poke is a very, very fun and unique style of combining like raw fish with things like edamame and green onion and
Starting point is 00:24:05 rices and mixed greens. So you could actually do poke and poke bowls and make those pretty much however you like. Those are an extremely versatile form of cooking. If you can handle and if you're cool with raw fish, Japanese probably going to be number one on the option list, but it might not be versatile enough. If you don't like raw fish though, you don't have to give up altogether. You do have teriyaki, which is generally just grilled seasoned meats paired with vegetables and usually some rice. So Japanese had to take the top spot, simple and easy. The one knock on it, and I do feel like I'm kind of splitting hairs here, it's terrible to go. It's not really easy to take sushi to go. It's really hard. It's almost always better eaten there. Poke bowls are all right for that. Ramen is all right for that, but I think it might've been the worst option on the
Starting point is 00:24:58 list when it comes to to go. So probably going to be your best bet if you're looking to go out. This and Mexican give you a lot of versatility But guys the top five in order were spanish thai greek Mexican and japanese if you're not, you know a huge fan of those foods But you're looking for healthier restaurant options. You could start there if you're looking at places that might be, you know Uh, you know fit within your plan you like to eat out, but you also like nutrient
Starting point is 00:25:26 density, great options there. So moving on out of that rankings list and into your questions, these were all fielded from my Instagram. You guys have the opportunity to ask me questions there. I do throw up on my Instagram story at least twice a week, a question box where you guys can ask me questions that I will answer either on Instagram or here on the podcast. Full transparency, been a lot better about asking them or answering them on the podcast. Just have not been spending a ton of time on social media lately. Feeling a little busy and feeling a little run down by the kind of American political theater that we're constantly dealing with. And I'm hopeful,
Starting point is 00:26:07 but I'm also distressed at times. And I lean left in certain areas and I lean right in other areas. And the algorithm has figured that out. So it does feed me a lot of politics content, which I try to avoid. So I have not been using social media as much. So this is where you'll get your questions answered. And this one comes from underscore ewebster underscore. And they ask, what is my opinion on refeed days when in a deficit? So I think refeed days can be effective. And essentially what refeeds are, or they are days during a deficit at which you go back to maintenance, usually by raising carbs so that you can take a small break from the diet for psychological and physiological reasons.
Starting point is 00:26:46 I have talked to a good friend of the show, Lyle McDonald, about this many times on the show. He recommends two-day refeeds for women, one- to two-day refeeds for men, where you bring the carbs up to maintenance. Everything else I've seen makes me believe that that tends to be pretty sound advice. Now, what's my opinion on refeeds? I think that refeeds can be good if you know you have a lot of weight to lose. Let's say you opinion on refeeds? I think that refeeds can be good if you know you have a lot of weight to lose. If you know that maybe, like let's say you do your refeed Saturday and Sunday and you know that Monday and Tuesday you have a lot of travel, a lot of steps, a lot of hard workouts, a lot of output. They can be timed really easily because they're short. They're
Starting point is 00:27:18 usually, like I said, one to two days. They're not too cumbersome. You're just elevating your carb intake to hopefully get you back to maintenance. They might be valuable to throw in here and there because there is some literature that shows taking diet breaks, which are basically just longer periods at maintenance, a little longer than a two-day refeed, that can be beneficial for mitigating the down-regulation of metabolism that happens from prolonged dieting. So when you diet for a long time, you're in a deficit for a long time, your body will try to adapt and constrain its energy output to fit within the deficit. So slowly you'll experience adaptations. If taking diet breaks can help mitigate that, perhaps refeeds can too. So a versatile tool in the toolbox.
Starting point is 00:28:01 Now, here's where it will bite you in the ass if you're trying to be in a deficit for fat loss, is if you aren't measured and calculated with that refeed. If you just eat whatever the fuck you want and go, oh, it's a refeed day, you could erase four to five days of being in a small deficit with one big refeed. So it does behoove anyone whose goal for refeeding is to make fat loss easier in the long run to be mindful and calculated when reintroducing calories for these plant refeeds. And I do think that carbohydrates are the things to add back in because they have the greatest likelihood of increasing performance in the gym and having that psychological and physiological reaction with leptin and ghrelin, your hunger satiety signals. So that's how I'd handle that. All right. This question from at
Starting point is 00:28:51 raise your vibe, babe asks, I've been active for years, but new to the gym. Where do I start? What do I even do? So let's say you joined a gym because you are looking for access to resistance training equipment. So you are new to resistance training. How should you start? What should you do? Well, here's what I'd recommend for anybody who's new. And again, guys, feel free to share this part of the podcast with somebody who you know, who's new to fitness, who's looking for where to start. I trained a lot of people in my fitness career, uh, and a good chunk of them have never lifted weights before in their lives. So I have a, a formula or a protocol, if you will, for novices and beginners that I think is really, really effective, really quick, really easy. And so the first is we're probably only going to train
Starting point is 00:29:39 two to four days a week. If we train two days a week, it's going to be total body, three days a week, total body, four days a week, upper, lower. So commit to two to four days. Those sessions can be anywhere from 20 to 60 minutes, no longer than that, because we don't want to overextend what we ask of you. If we're doing total body sessions, so we're going to do days two or three a week, two to three days a week, we need to make sure that in these workouts, we feature an exercise that simulates the squat. So that can be a bodyweight squat for a complete novice. It can be a leg press for somebody who lacks stability.
Starting point is 00:30:11 It can be a goblet squat for somebody who's ready for free weights. It can be a barbell squat for somebody who is ready for the barbell. Know your fitness level. Trust yourself. Select the option that is the most or least in this case intimidating, begin there. How many reps? Can be anywhere between 12 to 15. For novices, I do recommend higher repetition ranges so you can rehearse the movement with lower RPE or exertion, lower proximity to failure. Don't train to failure when you're brand new. So we need a movement that emulates the squat.
Starting point is 00:30:44 Don't train to failure when you're brand new. So we need a movement that emulates the squat. Ideally, we could practice the hinge or the deadlift or hinging at the hips. So RDLs or deadlifts or kettlebell deadlifts are great options. Even a hip thrust can count as a hinge. We should try to train a push, like a pushup or an overhead press or a pull, like a row or a pull down. We want to train all of the muscles of the body evenly, symmetrically, and equally. Okay. We don't want to allocate too much volume to any one muscle group. We want to spread it out. We want to avoid too many isolation movements if they get in the way of doing compound movements. So we want to move multiple joints and multiple muscle groups. That way we can build something called intramuscular coordination and intermuscular coordination, meaning we're not just
Starting point is 00:31:25 training the coordination of the muscle fibers in one muscle to fire together, but of multiple muscle groups to fire in concert to perform complex movements. This is good for your brain. This is good for your body. This is good for coordination. And I think that if you simplify your training into doing mostly compound movements, either three times a week, total body, or four times a week, upper lower, of course, you'd have two days for upper compound movements, either three times a week, total body, or four times a week, upper lower. Of course, you'd have two days for upper body movements, two days for lower body movements. You might be able to sprinkle in some more isolation work, but starting small, somewhere between six to 10 total sets per muscle group per week. So if you're training three times
Starting point is 00:31:59 a week, total body, you might do four leg exercise sets per day, four push sets per day, four pull sets per day. And you'll get about 12 a week and that'd be wildly epic and awesome. And you'll build so much results over that compared to doing nothing. It's remarkable. It'll blow your freaking mind. But the best advice I could give you is to start slow, be patient, focus on the compound movements, 12 to 15 reps, all the rest you need to make sure each set is done well, about two seconds up, about two seconds down. If you're too sore to train, take an extra day, go for a walk, be in the sun, try to get from two to three days a week, up to four to five days a week, assuming you've built enough momentum, and then just eventually
Starting point is 00:32:42 do what you can to up the intensity and proximity to failure. Because over time, to continue to make progress, the work that you do in the gym needs to be hard, it needs to be intentional, it needs to be meaningful. And the more coordinated and comfortable you get, the closer it will and the easier it will be to train to failure without getting hurt. I don't think you ever have to train to failure if your goal is just general fitness. And then save a little time for some aerobic work or cardio work on the front or back end of that to warm up slash cool down and definitely create some time for some core and direct abdominal training and stretching to remain strong and loose in the areas you'd like to be. That's like the condensed elevator pitch for how to train. If you've never trained before,
Starting point is 00:33:25 then you're looking to build a foundation. Okay. Last question comes from JC Lund and she asks, going through your physique guide right now, how sore is too sore to work out? So JC first, thanks for joining. Uh, you might be an elite physique, which is the app based program, or you're doing one of the female physique guides from the website, whether that's female physique, app-based program, or you're doing one of the female physique guides from the website, whether that's female physique one and two foundations or, um, power build. There's also the app-based programs, home heroes. For those of you guys training at home and elite physique, for those of you girls who are looking to take your physique to the next level in the gym. So those are all available at the link in the description of the podcast, or you can just go to corecoachingmethod.com
Starting point is 00:34:03 and navigate the tabs there. But how sore is too sore to work out? I have a very, very simple test for this. If I poke a muscle and push on a muscle, and it is tangibly sore to the touch, immediately, too sore to train. If I contract a muscle, and before I even reach the fully shortened position, it is aching, meaning it's not fully contracted yet, but it's still really aching, too sore to train. If I can touch it and massage it a little bit, and I get light to moderate pain, or I can flex it with light to moderate pain, probably good to go. And anything less than that, I'm letting it rip. So that's kind of how I gauge soreness. And if you are wondering like, okay, am I ready to train? Am I not ready to train? One thing you can do is you can go to the gym.
Starting point is 00:34:47 You can just start moving. And if the soreness doesn't dissipate within like five to 10 minutes or one to two warm upsets, just do a recovery session where maybe you do some low grade cardio, some stretching, pivot to a muscle group that's not sore and just adjust your programming. Maybe hit the sauna, maybe do a cold bath, whatever. But that's how I would approach soreness. All right, guys, that's going to do it for this episode. I want to thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you to all of you who continue to leave reviews. If you haven't yet, I will make
Starting point is 00:35:12 the plea to you again, scroll down, leave a five-star rating and review on iTunes or Spotify, and I'll catch you on the next one.

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