Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 255-Q & A: Best glute exercises, fasted cardio, fat intake and the female cycle, overtraining + more!

Episode Date: January 16, 2023

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a ton of high quality vitamins and minerals, they also contain unique adaptogens like KSM 66 ashwagandha and reishi mushroom, which I like to take each and every day to promote my health. If you want to cover all your bases with a high quality protein, creatine post-workout or the ancillary micronutrient health stuff like greens, powders, and multivitamin, I encourage you to go over to legionathletics.com and check out using the promo code Danny. That'll save you 20% on your first order and you'll rack up points that you can use the same way as cash every time you use the code and you'll also be supporting the show. Welcome in everybody to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue Podcast. As always, I'm your host, Danny Matranga,

and in today's episode, I will be answering your questions. This is the second half of a question and answer segment where I'm diving in to questions I fielded directly from you guys from social media. We will be discussing a variety of things from fat loss to muscle growth to dietary fat to fasted cardio, a lot of fitness nutrition topics to hopefully help you make sense of your fitness and training in the new year and position yourself to get better results and hopefully make less mistakes. If you'd like to have a question of yours answered on the podcast, the best way to do that is by leaving a five-star rating and review on the Apple Podcasts app with your question

included in the review, as well as heading over to my Instagram, following me at danny.matranga and asking your questions there. So without further ado, let's go ahead and get into your questions here. This question comes from Sean underscore Whittier. And the question is, how much fiber and protein should I get each day? Now, we talk a lot about protein intake on this podcast specific for body composition. And a generally good recommendation is between 0.7 to 1 grams per pound of body weight. And for heavier adults, you could do 0.7 to 1 grams per pound of your lean body mass or your goal weight. Now for fiber, generally you will see a recommendation of between 20 to 30 grams for women and between 30 to 40 grams per day for men. So that's per day for women as well.

And for those of you who are looking to lose body fat, you could probably eat slightly more protein and slightly more fiber for the reasons that these two things in particular do such a great job of helping to maintain fullness and help keep you satiated. Another benefit of fiber is that when you think about the foods that have fiber, it's usually fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Those fruits tend to be very dense in micronutrients, which is extremely valuable and very, very beneficial for promoting health performance, both cognitively and physically. So a generally higher protein, higher fiber diet could in all likelihood be not just associated with more fullness and better leanness, but probably also it would be quite health promoting.

Now, a few things to be mindful of with fiber, too much fiber can lead to digestive distress. So it's always a good idea to assess your fiber intake when you start kind of proactively looking to include more fiber to ramp it up and be mindful. Don't go from eating like zero servings of fruits and vegetables a day to like 10. Start with three to four and see how your body is able to deal with that increase in fiber because this will add bulk to your stool. It will slow down digestive motility. It's great for your microbiome. We talk about that all the time and the benefit of feeding that microbiome, that community of microorganisms in your gut and small intestines, the right things and fiber is one of the right things, but be

mindful as you add more in. And with protein, I do think that there is probably a cap at which point you're not going to be able to, especially if your goal is muscle gain, get too much more out of extremely high protein intakes. And I would also note that I think that 0.7 to one range, you could come down as low as like 0.55 to 0.6 and still get some pretty fantastic benefits. So this question comes from Jules Juliana. And the question is, can I get my steps in the form of a partial run or jog, or is that considered cardio? in the form of a partial run or jog, or is that considered cardio? I think that's a really good question. So I think for most people, the general recommendation of getting 10,000 steps a day is designed to promote non-exercise activity that in as much as possible is involuntary or unplanned.

Meaning I'd like to step more. So I'm going to park further away. I'm going to take the stairs. I'm going to be conscientious, but I'm not going to be like super deliberate and I'm not going to be like, Oh, got to go get 2,500 steps. Now you can do that. But the goal with promoting steps is to promote a general increase in activity. If you are going to do cardio on top of that, or you're just going to do cardio, that's technically like exercise activity. And absolutely, I think you could count that towards your step goal. I do think that generally speaking, the goal of doing more steps across the day is to get you off your butt and moving around to keep you moving and avoid back

pain and regulate blood sugar. There are unique benefits to doing more literal walking, just walking, right? Now the running and the jogging can fill that 10,000 steps probably quite quickly and your steps and strides will be larger and your caloric expenditure will be greater. But in adding this in, it doesn't change the fact that speaking generally, of course, people really stand to benefit from getting up throughout the day and walking. So if you're going to get the majority of your steps from running and jogging, you're not going to space them out across your day. Let's say you're completely sedentary the rest of the day. I think you might be getting the caloric expenditure that one would expect or would be equivalent in a approximate 10,000 step bout, but you'll be missing out on getting up and moving across the day, which is the main benefit of having a step

goal in the first place. So I think we need to remember that cardiovascular fitness and general well-being are two different baskets and that while doing a jog and a run can fill both baskets, right? The 10,000 steps specifically is a barometer for very, very deconditioned people to start with something. And it's a barometer for very, very sedentary people to have a movement goal that we think, or that I think generally people think is aligned with better health. All right. This question comes from coach underscore Garrett underscore, and he asks, where did I get most of my fitness knowledge? So there isn't any one place that I got it all from. I'd say that I've really pieced it together from a variety of different places. When I started

exercising, I read a lot of bodybuilding magazines. I watched a lot of YouTube videos. I watched a lot of nutrition documentaries. Interestingly, a lot of that source material now, I wouldn't go anywhere near because I think that it's rife with misinformation and generally just not a high quality source. I rely much more heavily now on research reviews, podcasts, and YouTube content occasionally that is created specifically by experts in the field of exercise, strength and conditioning, and nutrition. But I think it's really important to communicate that I didn't just start there digesting really high-level scientific content and that I developed a scientific literacy over many years, starting with things that were simpler. And, you know, I listened to a ton of podcasts early in my fitness career that were

fitness based, uh, or fitness centric that really helped me out. One of those podcasts was the mind pump podcast. I watch a lot of YouTube channels over the years. A lot of the YouTube channels I really learned from were Jeff Nippard and Omar Esau. I've listened to some more advanced fitness podcasts that dive a little more deeply into the science, like the Stronger by Science and Iron Culture podcast. Eric Helms of Iron Culture has been a guest on this show. Eric Trexler of Stronger by Science has been a guest on this show. Two fabulous minds to learn from in the health and fitness space that I think do a great job of making things accessible no matter where you're at. I did an undergraduate degree in exercise science. So obviously, you know, four years of formal training and academic training are going

to, especially with labs in the exercise physiology department and, you know, four years of formal training and academic training are going to, especially with labs in the exercise physiology department and, you know, cadaver labs and anatomy. These are things where you're going to pick up quite a bit. I've been personal training for a decade and to maintain your licenses, you need to do a ton of continuing education work. And I would always double or triple what was required. So I've done a lot of coursework from the National Academy of Sports Medicine, the American Council of Exercise. I'm naming these off in this fashion. So hopefully

you guys can grab and learn from some of these and maybe go with them. I learn a lot from social media. I follow some really, really brilliant people on social media. And I try to learn and implement from them what I think is interesting and unique. At this point, the principles are things that I've got down pretty hard and pretty well. So I like to apply a lot of what I think would be interesting and helpful and see how that works as long as the principles are sound. So I still explore and learn a lot from my own experience as a coach and trainer. But I've had so many wonderful opportunities to learn from great people and great creators who have come before me. One of the more interesting things that I tell trainers a lot when they ask me specifically about the acquisition of knowledge to help them

with the development of their business, like, oh, I want to be a successful trainer. How do I, you know, how do I get there? And I think there's absolutely no substitute for knowing your shit. You need to grind. You need to really understand fitness. But another thing you need to understand is people. And so learning how to interface with people, learning how to have difficult conversations with people, learning how to be present and on time and show up looking clean and prepared for sessions or show up in your check-ins for your online clients, whatever that might look like. I think you really need to learn how to understand people as well, not just exercise. Okay. This question comes from Deja underscore

Dej. And the question is there's a large wave of people who joined Pilates in the last year and swear by the results. What are my thoughts? I think Pilates is an excellent form of body weight exercise that is a little bit more active than yoga, which I believe to be a little bit more passive. And what I like about Pilates is that it has a big emphasis on the core and the maintenance of mobility and full range of motion training. Now, Pilates does tend to be a little bit more popular with women than it does men. And what's interesting here is women tend to have a lower relative strength than men. So moving body weight and doing calisthenic style exercise or body weight style exercise has a very, very good chance of

being extremely stimulating for a woman specifically who might not have a large history of resistance training experience. So Pilates can absolutely change your physique. And I do think it is a generally great way to exercise. I'm not somebody who hammers on really any type of exercise. I used to in the past look for opportunities to knock anything that wasn't resistance training. But then I realized very quickly that so many people struggle with their weight. So many people are sedentary. So many people are clearly suffering. And I don't use that term lightly. I really, really believe that a tremendous, tremendous

number of people are suffering unnecessarily from simply not moving enough. There is a genuine price to pay for not taking your health and fitness seriously. There is a genuine cost associated with not creating and making time to exercise on a regular basis. And it's not just about body composition. What's going on guys? Coach Danny here, taking a break from the episode to tell you about my And it's not just about body composition. 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 macro nutrition 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. 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.

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bucks, win 120 X your money. So many cool ways to play. There's also best ball as we get closer to fantasy where you can draft teams against your friends or against other people on underdog for your shot at millions of dollars in prizes. This is definitely one of my favorite things to do when I am playing or watching sports. I love underdog 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 $100. You'll have a blast playing underdog all season long. Back to the action. If you do not get outside and move, if you do not move your body, you do not contract your muscles, you do not load your tissues, you have 200,000 years of evolution that says, what the heck are we doing? The human body and

species did not evolve to sit in a chair like I'm sitting right now all day long. It just didn't. You know, we start to see legitimate physiological adaptations that are not ideal, whether it be declining mental health, whether it be clearly reduced self-efficacy and mood, lots of crappy things start happening when people don't move enough. And so while I don't believe Pilates is perfect and it's not an exercise modality I personally will be engaging with anytime soon, I think it's fantastic and I would love to promote it to as many people as possible. And I would say that if you're even remotely interested in Pilates, learn about it, try it. Because physical culture, which is to say the entirety of exercise that falls under the umbrella

of physical culture, all the different things you could do, bodybuilding, powerlifting, CrossFit, calisthenics, Pilates, yoga, all these things, and even non-fitness health promoting practices like sauna, cold water immersion, meditation, massage. I would say that people should engage with these things more often with people, with community, learn what you like, learn what you don't, try new things, become a, you like, learn what you don't, try new things, become a, let's say, what's the right terminology? I would say become a student of physical culture and expose yourself as much as possible to different things. And so a lot of people tried Pilates last year and liked it. You might be one of the people who does that this year. And I think it's great exercise, but if you're already lifting,

I'd keep doing that as well. This question comes from Lyndon Sepp. And the question is, how do I know if I'm overtraining? So there are a few things that are canaries in the coal mine, if you will, for overtraining syndrome. Now, overtraining syndrome is rare, and I would dissuade you from assuming that you have overtraining syndrome or have developed overtraining syndrome. Usually what we see or what I see with clients when we see signs of overtraining is really not necessarily a result of the training being too hard, although this does happen, but more of the result of the lifestyle factors that we need to recover properly being misaligned. So I see symptoms of overtraining like mood swings, loss of appetite, getting sick more

frequently, having a high elevated morning heart rate, being excessively sore, constantly being fatigued, struggling to make gains. You're actually starting to go backwards. You lack focus and intentionality in the gym. You're cold. You're not sleeping well. These are all things we see. I don't necessarily see these things spike when I give clients more volume. I, in fact, very rarely see these things spike when I give clients more volume. Where I do see signs of overtraining, what I have seen as a coach, when I see these things start to pop up more frequently is when clients have consistently disrupted sleep. I see these things start to pop up more frequently is when clients have consistently disrupted sleep, high external stressors, when things that typically are in alignment and allow them to recover become out of alignment. And then that volume that was very much once recoverable is no longer

something they can recover from. That training intensity is no longer something they can recover from because these external stressors are compressing and pushing in on them and asking a lot of them, demanding a lot of them. And that can make it very, very difficult on an athlete to maintain a high level of performance, a consistently high level of performance, mind you, for a high enough amount of time that they don't start to see these things kick in. Cause look, it's almost impossible to overtrain if you don't train consistently. And I tell people this a lot, like you can go to one or two or three workouts that are just hellacious and take like a month off. You're never going to overtrain,

but you could consistently and slowly and methodically train for five, six days a week over and over and over and over and over again and under recover and eventually kind of back your way into overtraining. I think a lot of people do one hard session. They go, I might overtrain. It's like, it's not usually from one session that you start to see the development of these overtraining syndrome symptoms. So I would look for those symptoms. I would ask yourself, where's my sleep? Where's my stress? Where are my external stressors at? I'd also keep in mind that you're more likely to see symptoms like this arise as a function of being in a hypocaloric state, not having enough calories, being in a deficit. Okay. So your likelihood of developing overtraining syndrome symptoms will increase when you don't have as much energy available. This is a second question that I also really liked also from Lyndon set. And the question is, do women need more fats in their diet than men?

How low fat diets affect women or how do low fat diets affect women? So I think what we need to understand here is that fats are essential, okay? So they make up that lipid bilayer around all your cells, they make up a good chunk of your brain, and they're really, really important for hormone production. So think about that. Your fats are essential because they make up the barrier of all of your cells. They make up a large portion of your brain and they make up a pretty considerable portion of the synthesis of hormones, particularly cholesterol. So protein, the other essential macronutrient is what most of the structures in your body from your bone to your skin to your muscles are made out of. And carbohydrates are that one macro that we don't consider essential because you can technically

live without them. I don't think you can function optimally as an athlete without them. And I don't think you should try to live without them because there's so many micronutrient dense carbohydrates like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, et cetera, right? But my point is this, dietary fat is of considerable importance to both sexes. It's an essential nutrient in all humans, but women don't necessarily need more dietary fat than men. What I've noticed is as a relative percentage of energy intake, meaning relative to their total daily energy expenditure, both men and women will see deleterious effects when they bring their fat below 30, 20%, 20, 30% or so of their total energy intake. For men, we start to run into problems from experience when they get below 60 grams of fat.

And for women, I start to see it below 50 for some women as high as 60. And I've seen women who come to me eating between 15 to 25 grams of fat who have not had a menstrual cycle in six to 12 months, who upon having a, you know, not, this is not prescribed to fix their menstrual cycle. It's just simply prescribed to keep them healthy while they train with us. We bring their fats up with the, again, intention of getting them into a more essential range and their menstrual cycle regularity resumes. So I think that women need to be particularly careful about going too low with their dietary fat because the hormonal disruption that a man would see in like reduced testosterone and maybe erectile dysfunction, low sexual appetite, libido won't be as destructive

physiologically as losing the menstrual cycle. That is, that is a kind of harbinger of health. If you will, for women, you don't want to see that thing go away, especially if you are of the age where you're still menstruating. Got a question here about fasted cardio from second son wellness. And the question is, is fasted cardio better than regular cardio? And my answer to this question is going to be a yes and no, no. And that if you're simply talking about aerobic fitness development, let's say between zone two to zone four, um, the traditional zones of aerobic development, not the upper echelon, like zone five for that high intensity aerobic development, not the upper echelon like zone five for that high intensity aerobic

capacity development. I think you need to have some fuel. Like I wouldn't recommend any sprinters go do high level sprinting. I wouldn't recommend any marathon runners go do high, long volume distances of running without having carbohydrate as a fuel source for just general short duration, moderate intensity aerobic training, I don't think you need to be fed. And for very low intensity training, I think fasted is completely fine. For weightlifting, I think fasted is completely fine. But what a lot of people are using cardio for is fat loss and cardiovascular fitness and cardio for fat loss are not the same thing. And what a lot of people do

with fasted cardio is they assume that if I don't have any food in me and my cardio intensity is low enough that I'm in the quote unquote fat burning zone, I should preferentially use more fat for fuel. And I've heard a lot of different experts communicate multiple different opinions. And I'd say at best, my answer is fasted cardio is meh with some scientific evidence showing that it's probably not worth it at all because what's going to happen is whatever substrate and substrate is a fancy scientific term used to describe fuel, whatever fuel source you use during exercise, you'll preferentially see your body shift its consumption of that fuel towards the other substrates.

So there's two substrates we really use for exercise. We do use phosphocreatine, but that's not worth talking about. Talking about the aerobic pathway, which uses fats, and the anaerobic pathway, which uses carbs. And for most of your weight training and sprint work, you're talking about carbs. For most of your low-intensity walking-style cardio, you can stay pretty aerobic. So that's why so many bodybuilders want to go do fasted cardio, slow and low and slow on the Stairmaster early because they're thinking I'm using my aerobic pathway, low intensity, I'm burning fat and I don't have any fat in my stomach or any carbs in my stomach. So I'm just

using stored body fat. And there's some ingenuity there. It makes sense. It's intuitive. And there's some ingenuity there. It makes sense. It's intuitive. But again, we see a disproportionate shift to the other substrate the rest of the day, meaning you're more likely to burn sugars the rest of the day and carbs the rest of the day because your body is pretty smart at preserving various substrates. So I do not think that you need to do fasted cardio. I think it could be a great tool if cardio in the morning when you're fasted is when you can do your cardio. I do fasted cardio almost every day, but it's more

of an inadvertent fasted cardio because I train weights fasted and I like to do a little cardio when I go to the gym. If I was specifically looking to lose fat, I wouldn't give a shit about either fasted or fed cardio. I would just really, really focus big time on my weight training and my diet. Last question of the day comes from Tiff Marie 1410. She says favorite leg and booty workouts for women. I think the best exercises for women to develop their glutes are the squat, the Romanian deadlift, the hip thrust, the Bulgarian split squat, the walking lunge, the leg press. Okay. Those are the best glute workouts I can think of. I really like the 45 degree back extension as well. All of these show up in my elite physique programming, which is an easy to use gorgeous app that I partnered

with train heroic to bring to you. So women's only training community, you can take this app with you to the gym for less than the cup of cost of a cup of coffee a day, and literally have programming that includes all of these movements and more to help you develop your best physique with an emphasis on the glutes. So you can check that out. The link for that is in the show notes, or you can just check it out on Train Heroic's website. Elite Physique is the name of the program. You can download the Train Heroic app and find it that way. All right, guys, I want to thank you all so much for tuning in. Remind you to leave a five-star rating and written review on whatever podcast servicer you use and

tell you that I will catch you on the next one.