Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 266 - Q & A: Cortisol, waist trainers, is coaching worth it, best 3 day workout routine + more!

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome in everybody to another episode of the dynamic dialogue podcast. This is episode 266. It's a question and answer episode. We're talking about cortisol and how it affects fat loss, what it is as a hormone more generally talking about stress, waste trainers, and whether or not they can actually shrink or even strengthen the core. Are these something that we can use towards or in our fitness the way they're so conventionally and often used in bodybuilding and with bodybuilders? What to look for in a good coach, nutrition coach, online fitness coach? The best workout routine you can implement in three days, or if you only have three days a week to train, and more. So sit back and enjoy the Q&A episode coming up next.

Starting point is 00:00:52 This episode is brought to you in part thanks to some of our amazing partners like LMNT. LMNT makes the best electrolyte product on the market. In fact, I've actually started drinking my LMNT each and every morning before I have coffee so as to optimize my circadian biology, make sure that I'm hydrated, and make sure that I'm getting ahead on my water intake throughout the day and not reliant on stimulants, but instead being somebody who's reliant on hydration and the proper balance of minerals and electrolytes. If you want to feel your best all day, mentally and physically, it's imperative that you stay hydrated. LMNT provides a balanced ratio of sodium, potassium, and magnesium to support brain and body hydration. This combination of

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Starting point is 00:02:25 When I put a box together, I try to load up on raspberry and citrus. And when you put your box together, you can get a free sample pack containing all of Elements' amazing flavors like mango chili, citrus, raspberry, orange, and more. To get access to this free gift with purchase, scroll down to the show notes and check out using the special link for Dynamic Dialogue listeners. Okay, so getting into our first question here. This one comes from Ali Sanchez. And all of these questions, by the way, folks, are from Instagram. That's the place to follow me and that's the place to engage with me.

Starting point is 00:03:02 I try to stay off TikTok because I think it is so toxically addictive and curated to just suck us in. And quite frankly, at the risk of sounding super nationalistic and mildly stupid, because I know how many of the other sites that we use, our data is just getting grabbed. It does cringe me out a little bit, just a little bit that the Chinese are essentially curating our feeds. They have like two golden board seats on TikTok, meaning they have two members of the CCP that essentially call the shots. And it drives me like nuts that they could essentially be showing children in China and adults in China entirely different content. And what they show Americans is like just off the charts. So if you want to engage, like it's just such garbage. If you want to engage with me, engage with me over on Instagram.

Starting point is 00:03:57 I try to upload to TikTok, but not spend any time on TikTok. And every once in a while, I drop a question box. So I'd love to get your questions over there. So this one comes from Ali Sanchez, and it's about cortisol, which I think is a good thing to talk about as we talk about managing your health, managing your stress, how this interacts with you, because it's a very popular buzz hormone, if you will, to throw around. So the question is, my mom swears training raises her cortisol and makes her gain weight. Help me give her the facts. So cortisol, here's perhaps the extremely interesting fact that a lot of people don't understand about cortisol.

Starting point is 00:04:39 Functionally, cortisol is actually in a catabolic hormone. So it is designed not to, in fact, help you gain fat or make you gain fat, but do the opposite. We didn't evolve to gain fat when we were stressed, okay? We evolved to use fat and carbohydrate as fuel when we are extremely stressed. So when you get stressed, the pituitary gland releases ACTH or adrenocotropic hormone. This goes to the adrenal glands and tells the adrenal glands to pump out cortisol. You see a lot of people who talk about things like adrenal fatigue, okay?

Starting point is 00:05:32 They talk about this pathway. And so the adrenal glands, which sit on top of the kidneys, release cortisol and usually adrenaline at the same time into the bloodstream, okay? This is what happens when we get stressed. And what happens is this cascade, this dual cascade of hormones, okay, convert liver glycogen to glucose. That is catabolic. That is a breakdown of fuel. Okay. A lot of that comes from adrenaline, but cortisol is catabolic in high amounts. Okay. We see an increase in blood pressure, probably due from the constriction of the vascular system.

Starting point is 00:06:06 Okay, both of these things happen when you get in a cold plunge, which is why it simulates a mild stress response and it's actually hormetic. It's the right amount of a good stress. And we'll talk about what your mom's issue is as we go here and why she might need to just find the right amount of stress for her. Okay, you're going to sweat more. You're going to increase your heart rate, right? You guys probably all remember this from high school biology. I shouldn't have to tell you something you already know. Okay. But it's good to know the basics and what your body's trying to do here is mobilize fuel, get you focused and put you in a situation where you can fight or you can flight. Now, why would a workout cause a cortisol spike, right? That's not something that

Starting point is 00:06:46 should cause a huge evolved survival response, right? Well, the truth is your body isn't exactly the thing interpreting the stress. Your mind is, and your mind is telling you what to do consciously and subconsciously at a hormonal level at times. So you see a tiger, you go, ah, shit, cortisol dump, adrenaline dump. Let's get the hell out of here. That's pretty simple. But when you're training really, really hard and really, really intensely, what you might not realize is that at a subconscious level, your body is keeping score and going, hmm, we're working pretty hard. We're accumulating a lot of physical stress. There's that word again, stress. Stress is a super, super important word to remember

Starting point is 00:07:32 when we think about how our body interprets the exercise that we're doing. And what I mean by that is you might have this thing on your schedule that says, I have a leg day today and I'm doing three sets of 12 reps and an RPE8, but your brain more or less interprets all exercise as some form of stress. exercise exists on this stress spectrum, which is why when you accumulate too much stress, and we would call the communal stress, you'd accumulate the allostatic load, that's work stress, life stress, relationship stress, plus workout stress, you're going to potentially see an elevation in cortisol. You train too long, you're going to potentially see an elevation in cortisol. But these transient, acute elevations in cortisol are probably not causing you to gain fat. Okay? I don't believe that to be true. I think that a lot of people have essentially conditioned people to frame cortisol as this negative fat gain hormone when in fact it's a stress catabolic hormone that works

Starting point is 00:08:41 with adrenaline to help you mobilize fuel. And if it's chronically elevated, yeah, you'll be in a position where losing fat is probably harder because you're so damn stressed all the time. It's hard to manage yourself around food, get quality sleep and hold on to important muscle tissue. But the idea that you're not losing fat because your cortisol is too high or your cortisol is high from some life stress. So, you know, your fat burning is blocked or if you like that needs to stop, because I don't think that is particularly aligned with the scientific consensus. If I'm being entirely honest with you. And I think it can be really easy to sensationalize hormones because people don't know anything about them, right? Hormones are really, really difficult to understand. And I'm giving you the best crash course I possibly can inside of a couple minutes. I'm being reasonable. I'm not

Starting point is 00:09:31 over kicking my coverage. There's a lot about these hormones I don't know, but I'm telling you what I do know. And I know that I know more than most people. And so I think it's very common for marketers to attempt to scare people. And it's important to know your mom is right. Her training is raising her cortisol. But it is because the body has a natural stress response. And when she stops exercising and gets into a more parasympathetic state, maybe has a meal. This is why a meal post-workout can be beneficial because it can immediately blunt that cortisol

Starting point is 00:10:05 stress response and it can help you get into a parasympathetic state. So to put it as simply as possible and hopefully give those of you who are listening as well as Allie's mother here the opportunity to frame this properly and move on from it without worrying about cortisol, when you train, you introduce a stressor. When there is a significant stressor, the body is going to release cortisol. If you are concerned with the cortisol release, you'd like to blunt it, you'd like to mitigate it. Getting into a parasympathetic, more relaxed state and out of that sympathetic, dominant workout state, that kind of out of that fight slash flight zone and into that rest slash digest

Starting point is 00:10:52 zone, you remember this from high school biology, you might want to focus on your breathing, turn off the intense music, have a meal that contains some carbohydrate, something that's insulinemic because insulin and cortisol do have an inverse correlation in the body. When one goes up, the other tends to come down. So if you're really worried about your cortisol and you're like, ah, social media has convinced me that cortisol is making me fat, then have a damn meal after you train and keep an eye on your stress and your body will figure out the rest. I'm convinced of this for most people, for most healthy adults. A lot of the fear around cortisol is sensationalism sold by fitness marketers to

Starting point is 00:11:31 make you think that there is something wrong with you. When in fact, your body's adapted over 200,000 years to be pretty fucking stress resilient. And you can manage these things by taking your recovery seriously and remembering that exercise is a stressor that exists on a continuum always. I like this question from Fit Dolcom. The question is, do you think waist trainers are useful for a tighter inner core? Okay. So when we say inner core, which I know you guys are probably like, what the hell is he talking about? Inner core.

Starting point is 00:12:06 You have abdominal muscles that are more on the surface and you have abdominal muscles that are deeper to the surface. Those ones closest to the surface are superficial. The ones deeper are known as the deep abdominal muscles. So one of those deeper abdominal muscles is the transverse abdominus. So one of those deeper abdominal muscles is the transverse abdominus. This is the muscle that we train when we do the cat cow exercise that's so popular in physical therapy and the management of low back pain. The transverse abdominus essentially pulls the waist inward, tightening it aesthetically. When you do a stomach vacuum, you're contracting. When bodybuilders do

Starting point is 00:12:44 that big stomach vacuum where they pull their belly button to their spine and hollow out their abdominals, they're contracting their transverse abdominis. We see the actual rectus abdominis completely lengthen and flatten as it's pulled inward. It's like nobody's flashing a hard six pack, even though they're ripped with a crazy six pack when they're doing a vacuum because it's the actual contraction of the transverse abdominis, like that's pulling the abdominal wall in and lengthening the six pack. So these, these core muscles work in concert to create movement, expansion, uh, rotation. They do so many things, but those inner core muscles, specifically the transverse abdominus,

Starting point is 00:13:30 I don't think they're going to benefit too much from using a belt or a waist trainer. I think they would develop and improve from physically training them. So like whatever effect you want to get shrinking the waist, a lot of people are looking to shrink the waist, like using tools like a waist trainer. Okay. And I understand this. 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

Starting point is 00:14:15 settle for average and we want to get the absolute most we can out of our training. So Legion is the company I go to for all of my supplement staples, whether it's creatine, which I get from their product recharge, my protein that I get from either whey plus or plant plus two of the best tasting proteins on the market. They come in a variety of flavors and they don't have a ton of fillers and gum just way made from grass fed cows from Ireland and 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 take a pre-workout. Sometimes I like it with caffeine. Sometimes I like to enjoy coffee in the morning and have my pre-workout

Starting point is 00:14:49 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

Starting point is 00:15:35 the promo code Danny. That will save you 20% and it will actually help you get two times points towards future orders, which you can use the same as cash. Pretty cool, guys. So head over to legionathletics.com and check out using the promo code DANNY to save on all your sports supplement needs. Back to the show. fitness and I saw a waist trainer, that would be convincing. I can put this on. It's going to make me lose fluid from the area. That must be fat coming off my body. That's great. Like I put it on, I get hot in that area. Shit comes off. I look thinner when I take it off. That would be incredibly convincing. But the thing is people wear the waist trainer to get a slimmer waist and whatever returns you're going to get from doing that are so damn small that the returns you would get from either a watching your diet, be training your core and transverse abdominus to actually strengthen the muscles that kind of

Starting point is 00:16:32 keep the core in the position you want it to look like. Uh, and then three, like developing a little bit of your lats and shoulders because it has that, it provides this illusion of a trim waist. If you did any of those three things, heaven forbid you did all three together as part of like a normal exercise and fitness routine. A waist trainer simply just becomes entirely stupid, silly, and obsolete. So can't recommend it here in almost any capacity. Now, one thing I do think is people misconstrue waist trainers versus belts. So belts are a little different. Those are generally a good tool because you're actually contracting out into the belt all the time to create, or not all the time, but when you're using it to create a lot of pressure

Starting point is 00:17:17 in the abdomen to help with force production, to help with the actual production of expansion of those tissues, increase irradiation, contractility, and electrical signaling between tissues. Like good shit happens when you get many muscles contracting together to create force. And it is very difficult to create force for most individuals in a maximal lifting potential. most individuals in a maximal lifting potential. And the heavier you get, the stronger you get, the more sensible it becomes to rely on tools like, let's say, a belt. So this question comes from AnyLifts. And the question is, do you think a nutrition coach, is it worth the investment? And I think the question here is really asking like, is it worth the investment? And I think the question here is really asking like,

Starting point is 00:18:10 how important is nutrition and nutritional adherence? And I think the answer to that question really boils down to what your goals are. So like if you're morbidly obese, you have cardiovascular disease brewing, you have metabolic syndrome brewing, a nutrition coach could be the most valuable thing in your life. If you're a dietician who's already lean and has every health marker imaginable in line, a nutrition coach would only be able to provide you with accountability to do things that you already knew how to do. So a nutrition coach should be providing you with a structure, and they should be providing you with accountability, support, and they should be providing you with a structure and they should be providing you with accountability, support, and they should be monitoring how you're responding to the diet. That's their job.

Starting point is 00:18:55 So that becomes more important when you have training specific goals. This is why we include nutrition coaching with our most popular online fitness coaching programs, because we understand that you're not going to gain a ton of muscle if your nutrition is not on point. You're not going to lose fat if your nutrition is not on point. You're not going to perform better at work or have more energy for your kids if your nutrition is not on point. Knowing what macros to get and when to get them is essentially all you need to really get started on making huge changes. So a nutrition coach can provide a ton of value. The person for whom I think the nutrition coach makes the least sense is that person I outlined already who is highly diligent and has tremendous nutritional literacy. The person for whom a nutrition coach, in my opinion, makes the most

Starting point is 00:19:37 sense is somebody who's metabolically ill, who struggles with accountability and consistency, or somebody who has specific fitness goals and is already going to the gym on a very regular basis, but not achieving or actualizing them because they're not eating appropriately. There are a lot of people who sink a ton of time and effort into consistently going to the gym and consistently busting their ass. And it's unfortunate when I see people who do this with the goal of reducing body fat. I see a lot of these people struggle considerably with getting their nutrition to the place that they were able to get their training. And I mean, they're really consistent with their training, but they're inconsistent with

Starting point is 00:20:21 their nutrition. So imagine four, five, six days a week, you're investing an hour in the gym, but you're never gaining any muscle because you're not eating enough calories or protein, or you're not losing enough fat because you're eating too many calories and you're not spacing your meals out and focusing on protein and fiber to stay full. So you can't string enough successful days of a deficit together to get anywhere. So all the energy, all the effort, all the diligence, all of the benefits you could be achieving from exercise aesthetically are kind of left on the table. You will benefit still from a mental health perspective. You'll benefit from being stronger and more mobile. That's enough right there. But if you want to change how you look physically, you got to get

Starting point is 00:21:07 the food dialed in. And a lot of people don't fucking figure that out until they've already sunk like four or five years into training. And they're like, oh shit, I left so many gains on the table. And it's like, actually, yeah, you did. You really goofed up. And so I think they make a ton of sense. Honestly, I think coaching just makes a ton of sense. So many people are going to the gym 20 to 25 days a month and doing absolutely jack shit programs and absolutely eating like crap for their goals. And if they tuned it up 20 to 30% by just following a good program and being really mindful of their nutrition, the results they'd get would be so much better. They'd be so much

Starting point is 00:21:44 more satisfied. They'd stop fucking comparing themselves to people on the internet who've already figured this out and have maybe better genetics than them. They'd be happy. They'd be proud. Their work would be showing off. And it's not to say that the effort is wasted because you're getting the benefit for the bone, for the mobility, for the muscle, for the metabolism, for the strength. That's undeniable. Exercise, as I said many times, if it had absolutely no ability to change how you looked, would still be one of the best ways you could spend your time. Okay, so last question comes from JTPalmer95, and the question is, what is the best three-day workout routine? So let's talk about a three-day

Starting point is 00:22:26 workout routine for muscle growth, a three-day workout routine for strength, and a three-day workout routine for general population fitness. So if we want to build muscle as optimally as possible across three days, I'd separate those days to like Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or maybe Monday, Thursday, Saturday. So you have a day in between each session. I'd focus on having four to eight exercises per muscle group. I'd want at least four of them to be compound movements. Those are movements that work multiple muscles through multiple joints and contract those muscles together. Think squats, deadlifts, lunges, rows, presses. And I'd want to have a little room on the back end for isolation exercises specific to the muscles I most want to grow. So if I want to grow my arms, I'll do more

Starting point is 00:23:09 curls and triceps. If I want to grow my shoulders, I'll do more raises. If I want to grow my quads, I'll do more extensions. And what I would do is I would select a variety of different exercises for each of the three days that train the total body in that capacity, meaning I'd pick a push, a pull, a squat, and a hinge for each day, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, for example. I train those for six to 12 reps, pretty close to failure, with about a minute to two in between, and I would sprinkle in the isolation work on the back end. That would be my optimal three-day split for muscle growth. If I wanted to do strength, I'd do it some kind of dynamic undulating periodization where I would pick three specific exercises for strength

Starting point is 00:23:51 acquisition. It could be a hex bar deadlift, a front squat or a split squat, and let's say a barbell overhead press and chin-ups. And I would do those four exercises three days a week each, but I would undulate in a dynamic fashion, the intensity. So I might do a speed deadlift on Monday, a heavy, heavy deadlift on Wednesday and a banded or elastic deadlift on Friday, exposing myself to various points on the force velocity curve and not exposing myself to the maximal fatigue of just lifting as heavy as possible all the time. And on the day that I focused on a twitchy sped up deadlift, I might focus on making that day my heavier squat. Whereas the day where I did my heaviest squat, it might make sense to include my pressing and my pulling and skip or reduce the intensity of the deadlift. Right? So we're just being thoughtful. We're thinking out loud like, okay, I don't need to necessarily expose myself to the most intense, hardcore shit all the time, but I need to practice these movements and develop strength and speed to get good and strong. So how can I space them out? And the last one for just general

Starting point is 00:25:11 population fitness, I would include some cardio and all of these, but I'd specifically look to include, you know, 20 to 30 minutes of aerobic work for your heart health. And then whatever you have on top of that, like assuming, you know, let's say you have an hour, I would do like 20 minutes of aerobic work for your heart health. If you're like a sedentary person looking to gain fitness, 10 at the beginning of the workout, 10 at the end, and then 40 minutes of compound weightlifting, uh, focusing only on these compound movements. You can do the isolation if you really want to, but you want to get the most bang for your buck compound movements, squats, lunges, presses, push pulls. I do again, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Monday, I do three sets of six Friday. I do three sets or Wednesday, do three sets of 10 Friday. I do three sets of 15 something on the lower side

Starting point is 00:25:56 of the rep range to maybe build strength. And then two days kind of in the middle and at the higher end to just accumulate all your muscle fibers to various levels of fatigue and demand across the workout. So that's what I do. If I could train three days a week, guys, I get a little creative there, but largely the same structure because what works works. And that's all I have for you today. So thanks so much for tuning in. I want to say, if you are listening and not subscribed, please do hit that subscribe button. It makes huge difference. And if you have not yet left a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, if you did that, it'd be amazing for me as well. Thanks so much. And I'll catch you on the next one. Let's grow this podcast in 2023.

Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 266 - Q & A: Cortisol, waist trainers, is coaching worth it, best 3 day workout routine + more!

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