Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 248 - Q+A: Best Back Exercises, Eating Clean on a Budget, Alcohol + More!

Episode Date: December 19, 2022

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It could be comments on my YouTube channel. It could be comments on TikTok, but most of these come from Instagram. You can simply put my name into any of those platforms to find me, which is a great way to kind of continue to pull from me the same kind of value you would pull from the podcast. So today's questions are going to be all over the place, including how to eat healthy when you're on a budget, what are the best compound exercises for training the back, what to do if you're having a surgery or a planned hiatus that will keep you from lifting, whether or not you should focus on muscle growth or strength acquisition if your goals are body fat loss. We'll talk a little bit about the sled and

sled pushes and how those exercises can be very valuable. We'll talk about alcohol and much more. So sit back and enjoy this episode. All right, so getting right into these questions, this one comes from Delaney218. And her question is, do I have any tips for how one ought to eat when they're also attempting to save money if health is their goal? The exact question is, any tips for eating healthy while being financially cautious? And I think with terms like financially cautious, you know, you got to kind of unpack the fact that everybody's in a different placeluent and quite wealthy in order to eat a healthful and nutritious diet, I've actually believed for quite some time that that is a little bit of a myth. And let me explain what I mean by that. So yes, a lot of nutritious foods or foods that are

manufactured by health companies are expensive when you're shopping at the grocery store. They have higher ticket price tags, but these are foods that are branded as healthy and nutritious. A lot of the keto options, vegan options, et cetera, are expensive because of that branding. But some of the most inexpensive foods, whether that be things like fruit in its whole food form, right? Not pre-sliced fruit, just don't buy the watermelon slices, buy the watermelon in its melon form. So some of the most expensive foods that you will find at the grocery store are foods that are marketed as healthy and they might be health promoting, but some of the least expensive foods you can find at the grocery store are also quite nutritious. Like I said,

fruit in their whole food form, many vegetables in their whole food form aren't entirely expensive. There's a variety of high protein options that are not entirely expensive. Maybe you don't have ribeye, but you can get ground chuck or ground sirloin. If you want to opt for poultry, poultry tends to be relatively inexpensive. Eggs and dairy are relatively inexpensive. There are a variety of protein-rich, nutrient-rich, fibrous, micronutrient-dense foods that you can buy at the store. These are healthy foods that aren't that expensive. So the notion that you have to spend a ton of money to eat healthy, not entirely true.

That being said, you might want to make specialized choices. Maybe you do have an intolerance to something that contains gluten, so you need to spend a little bit more there. My recommendation to you would be that you maintain awareness around, okay, these are the things I want to spend up on. Maybe you have a few expensive options or a few premium options. Again, you're trying to be financially cautious here. But the truth is, if you spend the majority of your disposable grocery money on those big rock

options that are very nutrient dense, you might have a little bit left over to spend on options that are a little more premium. So I would recommend that you really dial in those big rocks. You don't change them too much. Get your eggs, get your dairy, get your protein sources, get your plants, get your fruits, get your vegetables. A lot of your whole grain options aren't too expensive. A lot of your carbohydrate options aren't too expensive. There's oats, there's rices, there's breads. There's so many things that relative to some of the more health promoting foods or healthy marketing gimmick foods, you'll save money on. So make that the bulk of what you do and then see what you have left over. And if you have, again, money that you're comfortable disposing on healthy foods, I think that's a pretty good place to put your

money, especially if you're looking at maybe being financially more cautious or just making better financial decisions. Another part of this question, this wasn't asked directly, but I think it's a good caveat. If you simply eat out less, you'll probably save a bunch of money doing that as well because eating out has gotten quite expensive, especially where I live here in California. Okay. This question comes from Pang Cui. And the question is some compound back exercises for women. Now I get asked questions like this all the time, all the time. Probably the most common form of exercise selection question I get asked is, what are the best exercises to develop, insert the muscle group here, for women or for men? And the truth is, outside of some small variability in usually pelvic anatomy, right? Women tend to

have a lot of variability in their pelvic anatomy. The? Women tend to have a lot of variability in their pelvic anatomy. The exercises you select to train women and train men are going to be the same. The programming principles will be different because again, women have a menstrual cycle that fluctuates across a 28 to 32 day range. They tend to train differently in different parts of their cycles. Men tend to have a much more consistent training profile. Women tend to actually be able to handle more volume, and men tend to be able to handle slightly more intensity or volume at the highest intensity. But as far as actually selecting exercises based on your sex, not worth your time. The exercises that will help a male develop muscle will help a female develop the equivalent amount of muscle in the same regions. It's the programming principles that might be a little different. So the best compound exercises for back are vertical pull downs. These would be things like pull ups and lat pull downs. And then you have your row variations, which can be done unilaterally like one arm rowing, but those are your compound back exercises. The back has a lot of different

muscles. Remember, you've got the lats, the lower traps, the upper traps, the rhomboids, the rear delts, the teres. There are so many different muscles that contribute to the look of a well-developed, full-figured back that you're going to have to use a lot of different exercises, both compound and isolation. So keep that in mind as you plan your back training. This question comes from Andy Sheik. And the question is, I have to stop lifting for six weeks after surgery. How much muscle will I lose? First thing I would tell you is that you should be focused more on your recovery from the surgery than muscle loss. Now, there will be some reduction in muscle mass. It's almost impossible

for me to imagine that you could take six weeks off as a well-trained lifter and not see some muscle mass loss. One to two weeks, no problem. You probably won't lose anything. Six weeks, you might stand to lose something, but I don't think it's a huge amount. In fact, I think you would probably be better off not worrying about it at all because it's already kind of set in stone. You're gonna have that six week

post-operative recovery window. So instead of focusing on how much am I gonna lose, I would shift your focus to how much can I keep? And what I mean by that is like, okay, let's say you could lose between one to five pounds of muscle. One pound if you nail it, five pounds if you don't. What can you do to make sure that you nail it? I would say make sure that your protein intake is elevated. That will obviously help with muscle retention. Make sure that your calories are not in a huge deficit, be it maintenance or slightly above. That will help you maintain your body mass, including your

tissue. Make sure you supplement with things that can have a uniquely anabolic effect, like creatine. That would be a very, very good thing to supplement with. I might also recommend, and again, this is as a non-physician, so take all of this with a grain of salt. I'm not your doctor. I'm not your surgeon. I would also recommend really focusing and doing whatever you can to focus on your sleep. I've worked with a number of clients in a post operative state, and it's not always easy to get fantastic sleep after an operation for a variety of reasons. But if you can get into a more regular sleep rhythm more quickly after surgery, that will help. So I can't tell you exactly how much muscle you would

lose without knowing all of your stats and without pulling up a lot of research around atrophy post surgery. And it would probably even be specific to the surgery. But I think it's important to note there are things you can do to mitigate that muscle loss or that tissue loss that shouldn't be all that invasive and should probably just be, in general, health-promoting behaviors that you would already want in place if you were conscious about muscle loss. Okay. This question comes from AJ's Cake Shack. And the question is, I want to lose 15 pounds, but I also want to lose muscle. Do I need to focus on one at a time? So we're going to split this answer into novices and advanced. So, and for anybody who's intermediate, you'll be able to essentially kind of parse out that you're probably in the middle of these two answers. So if you are a novice, you can absolutely lose muscle or lose fat and build muscle at the same time because your body, the cellular machinery that dictates muscle growth is going to be so damn sensitive,

so damn sensitive to a resistance training stimulus that you will grow even with inadequate nutrient availability. Meaning, even if you don't have enough calories, even if you don't have enough protein, you can expect to see some level of muscle tissue gain because the machinery that is responsible for building muscle is going to be so damn sensitive to the stimulus. Now, the more you train, the longer you have trained, the more important it is that you remain aware that those cellular machinery processes that help with muscle growth are less sensitive, right? It basically, what this means is on a rep per rep basis, muscle fibers are more resistant. Myonuclein, all of the different things inside of your cellular machinery or your DNA are more resistant, like myostatin, et cetera. There's a lot of different

things that are going on. The more advanced you get that are basically telling your body, yeah, we can keep adding muscle, but like, do we need to add like 30 more pounds like we did in the first one to three years of training? And in order to optimize that and kind of work against your body's rate limiting desire to kind of choke off muscle gain, meaning it's like, okay, it doesn't want to just be one blob of muscle. Remember the human organism is designed to survive, not to be as jacked as possible. You need the stimulus from food, from sleep, from protein, from everything to be that much more aligned with optimization. So if you've been training five, six, seven, eight years, getting the right amount of protein is critical.

Getting the right amount of calories is critical. Spacing that protein out is critical. Taking the right supplements is critical. Training to failure or close to failure, having higher training volumes, et cetera. Those things kind of need to be in place to help you continue to grow because there is a point at which you will see diminishing marginal returns. And as an advanced lifter, training in a deficit, meaning like, okay, I'm going to train with resistance, but I'm also going to be in a deficit, won't

yield the same progress as training in a surplus. 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. 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, betaine anhydrous, and l-citrulline to help you perform your best. They also make a phenomenal greens powder loaded with one of my favorite things, reishi mushroom, and a men's and women's multivitamin that contain a few different things that men and women might need for their unique physiology. So when you think of your vitamins, your fish oil, your pre-workout,

your protein, all of the things that many of you take every single day i'd encourage you to check out legion they have 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 dann. 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 are a one-on-one fully tailored online coaching program 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 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 to you to see if you're a good candidate. And if we don't,

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. Hey, everybody, I have a favor to ask you. If you're a regular listener or somebody who gets value out of this podcast, somebody who's learning from me on your health and fitness journey, whether you're a trainer, a high-level athlete, or you're just getting started, other people need this kind of advice. And the best way for you to help me grow the podcast is to take a little bit of time, literally one to two minutes max, to leave a rating and review on the app that you listen to your podcasts on. The majority of you probably listen on an iPhone and you probably listen on Apple podcasts,

but many of you listen on Spotify. Both platforms allow you to leave a quick, easy review. And if you could leave me a five-star review plus a short one to two sentence blurb about what you like, not only will it help more people reach the podcast, it will help me to continue to refine what it is I bring you each and every week. Thanks so much for doing this. It means the world to me. It helps me achieve my dream of helping more people live a healthier life. Enjoy the episode. So if you're advanced and you want to lose 15 pounds, I wouldn't expect to build a ton of muscle while being in a deficit. But if you're new and you want to focus on both at the same time, I think you could expect slightly better results if that makes sense. Okay. This question comes from bourbon underscore fit, and it is actually the second question or the first of two questions

I'm going to answer today about the sled. And so the question here is, what muscle groups do sled pushes work? And so a sled push is where the sled is in front of you. Usually the shoulders and the arms are in the flexed position overhead, like they would be in an overhead press. The back is flat and you are running forward or driving the sled forward. So that's going to train some knee extension and some hip extension. So what we can expect to train are knee and hip extensors. So hip flexors, quadriceps, glutes, and of course, hamstrings. You will get some calves, although I do think it's better off to look at the sled push as primarily training the largest muscles of the lower limb. If you walk backwards with the sled,

with the back pedal fashion, that's going to mostly be knee extension. The more vertical your trunk, meaning the taller you're standing, the more knee extension you'll use. The more squatty you are, the more hip extension you might use, but I would still only do that backwards walk to train terminal knee extension. There's nothing wrong with like a hip dominant backwards sledding, but I think you get more out of hip dominant forward sledding. So there's a lot of different muscles being used here. And that question was from underscore V alpha. So this question, this is no, I'm sorry. That question was from bourbon underscore fit underscore V alpha asks, how and why do you program the sled push? So let's talk about

the re specific demographics for whom one might program the sled. Let's talk about first, uh, athletes. So obviously with athletes who have to focus on sprinting and have to focus on speed and the development of speed and the development of lower body power, you could use sled pushes as a phenomenal pseudo sports specific movement, right? If you got to sprint forward, you need linear speed. Well, guess what? Sprinting with like a pretty linear path while you're driving against a weighted sled will help you cultivate a little extra oomph without getting too scientific. You can do this with drag using things like parachutes. You can do this with partner

resistance using things like bands, but just generally making it harder to reach top speed will make it a little bit easier to reach top speed in the absence of resistance. The second, let's call it cohort, for whom we might use the sled would be general population clients. So these are probably people between the ages of 20 and 60. And within this cohort will include people who are focused on aesthetics as well as fat loss. This is the demographic where I think sledding is tremendous for warming up and prepping the joints for squatting, lunging, hinging, et cetera, because not all sledding has to be done at high speeds or max efforts. But the demographic or the people for

whom I believe the sled push to actually be the most beneficial, not athletes, not physique sports focused individuals. I'm talking about old people. I'm talking about your grandmother. You see, training hip extension is really important. Being able to locomote, move, drive, create force with the lower body is really important. But able to locomote, move, drive, create force with the lower body is really important. But when you train people who are older, people for whom axial loading or having a bunch of weight on the back is suboptimal, or they don't have the mechanics to safely pick something up from the ground, or perhaps they have a preexisting pain point in the spine or lower back, it can be hard to train dynamic, forceful,

powerful knee and hip extension. But when you have something like a sled that allows you to essentially tell somebody, hey, walk up to this and push it as fast as you can, regardless of their fitness level, the lack of technicality allows for a really good expression of force and force production. And so for older people, sled pushes as a means of developing lower body strength and power. It's something that shocked me as a coach. I wish I had started doing this earlier with my older clients because it has eliminated the need for a lot of the more technical lower body movements. It's not to say we don't do them. We just do less of them because we get so much out of using the sled. The next question comes from ACRN19, and the question is, creatine for women? The answer is

yes. You might want to double check on that if you're pregnant or breastfeeding. I'm not a doctor. Following that up with another creatine question from ACVONHAT, the question is, what creatine supplement do you recommend? I like Legion's Recharge because it does contain some secondary ingredients that help with creatine absorption, as well as a good dosage of carnitine to help with muscle recovery. But what you're really after is about five grams, two to five grams of creatine monohydrate. You can save your money on the more expensive stuff. Okay. This question comes from Diane underscore Yoder 2020. And the question is when doing full body workouts, is it best to have a rest day in between? My answer to that question

is yes. I do believe that you're probably going to do better if you're training full body, do believe that you're probably going to do better if you're training full body, taking full days off in between than you would be training two, three, four days in a row. Because what you're going to do is you're going to end up in a situation, right? You're going to end up in a situation where when you go into the gym the next day, you're going to be training muscles you trained probably less than 24 hours ago. And unless you just have a ton, a ton of supplemental recuperative activities already in place. I'm ice bathing. I'm doing my cold water immersion.

I'm taking electrolytes when I train to make sure that I'm constantly hydrated. I'm doing my cold water immersion. I'm taking electrolytes when I train to make sure that I'm constantly hydrated throughout the training process. I'm, I'm positioning carbohydrate on the right sides of my workout. Same thing with protein to maximize muscle recovery and minimize excessive muscle protein breakdown. Unless you are nailing it and you are well-trained and your volume is dialed, I think you might as well take a day off in between because you'll probably be better off with the, as far as an intensity and output and productivity is concerned, having a little bit more time in between sessions to recover, because I don't think there's many people out there who can train super hard, especially when

you're doing compound full body movements or movements with a lot of axial loading where you have a, you know, full body routines are really contingent and kind of dependent on the use of compound movements, barbell lifts movements with which, or in which we're training a lot of muscles. Uh, it's hard to have nervous system recovery, get to the point you needed to get to, to be successful with sessions like that without having a day in between. So I would definitely, definitely, definitely be looking at taking a day in between of a total body training session, unless you're training with body weight and dumbbells. For our home programming, there are a lot of days that include some crossover, but we try to make sure that there's body weight with resistance crossover.

So like meaning you might do a body weight reverse lunge on Tuesday after doing a squat to press on Monday, but you're getting Wednesday off. So it's never easy to do full body programming, but the more intense the programming is, the more demanding the programming is. That's when I think it becomes really, really important to make sure that you're getting that adequate time to recover. Okay. Here comes question number eight, I believe, which are, what are the, this one comes from weight loss underscore confessions. What are the recommended exercises to strengthen the knee? So you obviously have the muscles that extend the knee. Those would be quadriceps muscles. And then you have muscles that kind of flex and stabilize the knee on the posterior side of the body. Those would be the hamstring muscles. So you need to train your

hamstrings to flex the knee. Lying hamstring curls are great for this. And to extend the hip, things like hip hinges or Romanian deadlifts would be good for this. To strengthen the quadriceps, you need to do some type of knee extension. Leg extensions are often a good choice here. And I would recommend a squat or lunge pattern. Once you do that, you can actually help to provide stability to the knees by strengthening the glutes with things like hip thrusts and band abductions or any type of abduction work. But strengthening the knees is usually going to be a combination of strengthening the quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes, hip flexors, and even your core. Okay. This question comes from barrage.barrage. And the question is why is alcohol bad for your fitness journey? Now I don't

have a ton of like hard line puritanical rationalization for avoiding alcohol. I'm not perfect. I'm somebody who indulges in things that probably aren't entirely healthy. However, I do think it's important to note that alcohol has some distinct evidence-based non-puritanical, like meaning I don't have to have an ax to grind here to tell you the facts. Okay. Alcohol will disrupt your sleep. Alcohol will make your sleep less restful. Alcohol will increase the number of times you wake up during your sleep. Alcohol can lead to snoring and sleep apnea. It's probably a good idea not to drink at night knowing these things, but when do most people drink? They drink at night. Alcohol can make you eat more. It stimulates your appetite, makes you feel hungrier. It pairs your judgment

pretty considerably around a variety of things. In fact, one of the only four-star reviews I ever got on the podcast was when I said alcohol can make you more susceptible to choosing to mate with somebody with whom you normally would not, meaning you might take someone home from the bar that you wouldn't normally. Somebody was deeply offended by that and left the pod like a two-star review. But imagine this, if working out or if drinking alcohol might make you take somebody home that you wouldn't normally take home, you better believe that alcohol can make you eat something you wouldn't normally eat or that you were determined not to eat on your fitness slash fat loss journey. That's before we even get to the

stuff that is like directly antithetical to why you're working out. Like you're probably working out to look better and live healthier. Well, guess what? Alcohol is a known risk factor for a ton of different cancers and drinking alcohol can lead directly to weight gain because alcohol has calories indirectly to weight gain because it makes you eat more of the stuff you're probably inclined not to eat. So those are some of the kind of more obvious big reasons that I would make a point to stay away from drinking a ton of alcohol or at least drinking regularly if I was concerned about my physique and my health. GenuineSnow.Country and it is, are you taking new male clients? I'm from Seattle and I've been an avid follower for a while. So me and my coaching company are based out of Sonoma County.

So if you're local to Sonoma County, you can always come to the studio and work with myself. And, and that's probably less likely based on my schedule, but definitely one of the trainers or our amazing physical therapy team. Here's the other cool thing. We offer 100% remote online coaching. So this would be customized programming, customized nutrition considerations, unlimited email support, weekly check-ins, all of the stuff that we believe you need to be successful. Education, support, accountability, a plan, and somebody whose job it is to help guide you through the process. So if you aren't in Sonoma County, worry not. You can head over to corecoachingmethod.com. That's my coaching company.

You can apply to work with us online. You can end up working with me depending on what my roster looks like or one of our amazingly high qualified coaches who have years of experience training clients in person and online with multiple certifications. I've yet to meet a coaching company who required multiple years of in-person experience in order to be able to be hired as an online coach. And I take great pride in what it is that we offer. I will finish this guy off with one last question. This one comes from Jfiggyfig.

And the question is, what are the best exercises to address a weak gluteus medius? And so the gluteus medius does a lot of stability or stabilizing of the hip during gait. It also performs AB duction or abduction. We say AB because abduction and adduction sounds so much alike, but that's what you really want to be focusing on is AB duction. Okay. Movements that take the hip and move it away, move it away from the midline of the body. Okay. So you've got things like the outer thigh or bad girl machine. You've got cable hip abduction. You have lateral band walks or banded hip abduction. All of these exercises are excellent for helping you to better take your kind of glute med training to that next highest level than just doing hip extension, which is mostly going to target the glute max. So that's something that you want to avoid. You want to avoid only training the glute max, and you want to focus on training your glute med with hip abduction. All right, guys,

that does it for this episode. Thank you so much for tuning in. I really appreciate it. If you learn something today, please share this with somebody, a simple text share, share it via word of mouth. That's the best way to help a podcast grow. And if you have not yet, take two minutes to leave a five-star written review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. That will help the podcast grow too. I'm extremely grateful for each and every one of you taking the time to leave reviews, and I will catch you on the next episode. you