Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 270: The Top 5 Fitness Scams of 2023...

Episode Date: March 16, 2023

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Welcome in everybody to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. As always, I'm your host, Danny Matranga. And in this episode, I want to go over what I believe to be five fitness industry scams that people continue to fall for that quite frankly exist at this point the way they do because of marketers, coaches, trainers, influencers, companies, brands know that they can monetize the crap out of this stuff. And I think it's just getting a little bit too much runway, if I'm being entirely honest, and if I'm being completely frank. And I think in the long run, these scams are going to continue to generate money for the wrong people. And because there's little bits of truth in each one of these things, it's really hard to get them to dissipate without thoughtful

discussion. So today we'll be talking about five things, gut health, reverse dieting, kinesiophobic or injury prevention, specific language, over-intellectualizing training, and hormone replacement therapy as it's typically and currently being prescribed. These are things that I think require more thoughtful discussion. So without further ado, let's get into it. Today's episode is brought to you in special part thanks to our fantastic new partner, Gooder Glasses. Gooder makes the best outdoor eyewear for athletes. If you want glasses that are high quality, don't slip, don't bounce, are 100% polarized, protect your eyes from the sun, and cost less than 25 bucks, then Gooder is your go-to.

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first orders. I threw a link in the show notes and you'll see me sporting them all over social as well. You can head to goodr.com slash Danny and use the code Danny to get free shipping. I'd order a couple pairs, see what you like, send back what you don't. You'll probably love them all. You can't go wrong with a pair of Gooders. This podcast has some awesome partners. And one of my favorite, of course, is Legion Athletics. Legion is my go-to supplement manufacturer for what I like to call my big rock supplements. This would be my protein powder, my pre-training formula, my post-training formula and creatine, and my kind of ancillary vitamins and micronutrient protection. So why do I like Legion so much? What sets them apart?

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that you can use the same way as cash every time you use the code and you'll also be supporting the show. Okay, everybody, let's get into the first of the five fitness scams. Actually, let's first preface first with some things that I think make for generally sound rules for the road. I don't believe anybody who's passionate about these things is malintentioned, lying, or attempting to deceive people. In fact, I think a lot of people are incredibly well-intentioned, they just haven't put all the pieces together. Now, additionally, every single one of these things has more than one grain of truth and a lot of nuance. So the things we talk about are going to actually have a lot of validity, but it's the way in which they appear, especially from a marketing and content standpoint, that make me think, hmm, I believe that the ideology here has taken a turn for the

worse and the nuance and the pieces of the puzzle that we can learn from have kind of been abandoned in favor of kind of bastardizing these terms for sales and marketing purposes. And the first of these is gut health and the idea that gut health and that anybody who experiences temporary gastrointestinal discomfort, who experiences a gas, or who experiences even any psychological condition such as anxiety or depression, is suffering from terribly bad gut health and microbiota disruption slash dysregulation, which is essentially just a fancy way of saying that there are a lot of people in the health and fitness space for whom the microbiome and the small microorganisms that make up the gut are the gateway for all of human health. And because of this, we need to market products to people that can fix, remedy,

and enhance their gut health. And the truth is, guys, there are very few products that can do this. A high quality probiotic does stand to increase the number of available microbiota and microorganisms that could populate and propagate in the gut. Things like fermented products that one might buy at the grocery store that are often marketed for gut health have tremendous potential to provide probiotics in their natural form. And there are a number of studies in humans that show probiotic foods when paired with fiber. So this could be something like kimchi that is both probiotic and fibrous, or something like Greek yogurt and resistant starch like cold rice

can really help improve various markers. We would look at when looking at the microbiome and saying, do we see the right kind of bacteria here? The kind of bacteria that are oftentimes associated with optimal digestion, reduced prevalence or incidences of gas or intestinal discomfort. And so we do know some of the stuff we can do. And it's quite simple at this point. It has a lot to do with minimizing, eating a lot of refined sugars and things that can feed the wrong bacteria, loading up on things that feed the good bacteria, which are prebiotics and resistant starches, exposing ourselves to fermented foods that contain probiotics, and beyond that, everything is highly individualized.

And for people who suffer from legitimate gastrointestinal problems like GERD or irritable bowel syndrome, things like colitis, ulcerative colitis, things like Crohn's, there's obviously going to be an expanded need for nuance because simply recommending more fiber, more fiber, more fiber, more ferments, more ferments, you know, probiotics, that's not necessarily going to solve anybody's problem. But there are a number of professionals for whom messaging constantly about gut health and putting the idea of heavily disrupted gut health out there into the content space, that is their MO, their modus operandi. That's their goal. That's what they want to market on. That's what they'd like to sell to. And there's something known as the nocebo effect, folks. We're going to talk about this quite a bit

today. And the nocebo effect is essentially the opposite of a placebo effect. A placebo effect is when you let a patient or a trial participant, you lead them to believe that they are taking the active drug or substance that's being tested for, you allow them to be aware of the byproducts and the effects that this compound produces in the body. And then instead of giving them that, you give them a sugar pill and you look to see if they manifest any of the symptoms or any of the expected responses in the absence of the compound. This is a way of essentially proving just how powerful the mind and brain can be at changing our state physiologically. And the nocebo effect is essentially the opposite, where you alert somebody to the dangers of a potential compound, do not give them or expose

them to the compound and see if they manifest negative side effects. So something that can happen when you become abundantly aware of these things or bombarded by these things is I think people can start to develop more enhanced symptomology of gut disruption because they're stressed by all the people online telling them their gut is irreparably damaged. Oh, you've experienced gas, bloating, discomfort, by the way, all things that are very, very normative and quite common for people who ingest a standard American diet. So instead of selling them a lot of these gut health products, which tend to be things like greens powders or anti-bloat teas, or even like really low quality, um, quote unquote, random gut health supplements that contain things like

collagen and low tiered probiotics that don't even have a high fluorescent unit at count. So we don't even know if what's in there is even alive, just amalgamations of stuff that we think we can throw at gut health. And we're throwing it at people who are well-intentioned, who want to be healthful, who want to take care of all their organ systems. And I believe a lot of people have been noceboed into experiencing severe gut disruption that wouldn't have otherwise been there because of all the fear-mongering and stress-inducing by some of these gut health creators. And it's very rare for me to hear these people advocating for simplified, easy, preventative approaches to monitoring one's gut health. For example, easy preventative approaches to monitoring one's gut health. For example, it's never about here are things that you can do if you're healthy or experiencing marginal to below average amounts

of gas, bloating, intestinal distress, et cetera. You can eat a little bit more fiber. You can eat a variety of plants and vegetables. You can eat resistant starches. You can chew your food well. You can eat more slowly. You never hear these things. You usually hear a push for certain products and detoxing and elimination of gas via these teas and potions and powders. And I think that it's going to end up doing a disservice to people who actually do have more serious gut health conditions that they're managing with a clinician. Again, I mentioned some of those earlier. I think it's going to make it more difficult for people who are in the stages of developing gut dysbiosis or having problems with their gut to know who to

follow. I do think that there are some professionals in this space who do a phenomenal job. They know what to look for. They know what parasites to look for. They know what bacterial overgrows to look for. They're really in depth. But these tend to be people who are not selling products that aren't tightly correlated with a specific problem. They're not taking a shotgun approach. They're taking more of a sniper approach. They're not taking a shotgun approach. They're taking more of a sniper approach. They're like, I know what to look for. I will make prescriptions. I haven't worked with one of these individuals personally, but I do know a lot of smart people whom I would trust to look at a GI panel of some sorts and see things that are out

of alignment. But I don't necessarily trust personal trainers on the internet who are selling greens powders and detox teas. And I'm definitely do not trust any health and fitness coach who is blaming the epidemic of both depression and anxiety exclusively on gut health. Like, you know, I think that there are so many inputs. We'll use anxiety as an example within the last 20 years that have changed rapidly from birth control prescription to increased caffeine intake, to disrupted gut microbiomes, to wild increases in screen time. Like for somebody to say, oh, anxiety is caused by poor gut health. It's like, excuse me, have you opened your eyes and even looked at the world in which we're living? There's so many multifactorial obvious correlates here.

It's not fair to simply blame everything on gut health. So this is something that I think has been turned into a bit of a scam. Point number two, I think this might take the cake, scam. Point number two, I think this might take the cake, is reverse dieting. I don't know a coach worth a shit who's been coaching for more than six to eight years, who has not attempted reverse dieting with a client, who was not duped into believing in reverse dieting. This just makes so much sense intuitively that it's very easy to see how it kind of got away from us, so to speak, and became this idea that you could perpetually and forever increase your caloric maintenance by gradually and slowly increasing your caloric intake. I remember the first fitness program I ever followed from a fitness professional

had me believing that if I ate like a hundred more calories every week in perpetuity, that my base metabolic rate would increase to like 8,000 calories a day. And this is somebody who was a fake natural bodybuilder at the time, who was not being honest about why their metabolic rate was so high and who was sharing all of the junk food that they got to enjoy while maintaining their massively ripped physique. And so that was kind of my first exposure to this notion that if you increase calories slowly, your body will adapt to that intake and you'll kind of perpetually be able to eat more without getting fat. That was kind of the birth of reverse diet. Then came like diet stagnation born reverse diets. Like I'll give you an example. Uh, I stopped losing fat in my deficit. So I need to actually

eat more, um, for like six to 12 months to tell my body it's safe to diet again. And this is counteracting natural metabolic adaptations to weight loss. These are things that we should expect the longer we diet. The longer we're in a deficit, it would be wise for us to expect a slow and steady down regulation of our metabolism and our output because our body is trying to work within the constraints of having less calories available. What's going on guys? Coach Danny here, taking a break from the episode to tell you about my coaching company, Core Coaching Method, and more specifically, our one-on-one fully tailored online coaching program. 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, we'll put you on a waiting list, but we'll be sure to give you the best shot at the best coaching in the industry. So head over to corecoachingmethod.com and apply for one-on-one coaching with me and my team today. Now, the thing is, this stuff tends to reverse more quickly than we'd expect, and it tends to almost always be reversible. I've talked to Dr. Eric Trexler about this a number of times. This doesn't mean you should diet all year round. This doesn't mean you should diet in perpetuity. In fact, it means you should probably take more diet breaks,

and you should probably take more diet breaks and you should probably take more refeeds. This is why I tend to lean more towards trusting coaches, trainers, nutritionists, and dietitians who preach slower, more long-term approaches to dieting with diet breaks and refeeds than I do people who are marketing that everybody needs to reverse diet to lose body fat. It got to the point guys, where people were like quite literally taking like cohorts, coaches of people into like reverse dieting programs, like large scale, like, Oh, new cohort, we're all going to be reverse dieting together. We're going to like raise our metabolic rates or new cohort. Like we're going to fix your broken metabolism. And it tends to be this fear-based kind of dangerous language, if you will,

that quite frankly, I believe makes people substantially more confused than it does help them. I think people are going to get way more out of understanding the natural metabolic adaptations that occur with dieting, the natural metabolic response of downregulation over time, the natural metabolic response of being able to slowly but surely up the amount of calories you eat over time, but there being caps to that, I think that these are discussions that need nuance. I don't think that telling every single person who stopped fat loss that they just need a reverse diet or who saw a stalled fat loss that they just need a reverse diet helps more than it hurts.

who saw a stalled fat loss that they just need a reverse diet helps more than it hurts. Because I don't think it has, like a lot of coaches, I think just got afraid to ask clients as they got leaner and leaner. Are you still tracking with the same intensity and excitement that you were tracking with when we first started working together? Because most people slow down on that. They loosen up a little bit and their fat loss slows and they go, oh, is my metabolism broken? And coaches go, oh, I don't know. Maybe we need to reverse diet. It's very possible that we need to reverse diet. And I think a lot of this was born from not wanting to challenge people and ask them, are they still approaching their fitness with the same degree of, let's be honest, with the same degree of commitment. And so you say, hey, okay, I'll give

you 200 more calories, we'll start the reverse diet. And then people go get 200 more calories and they start losing body fat again because they were so petrified of adding calories they tracked with so much discipline that they actually were still in a deficit. Because if you're like most coaches, you find out a total daily energy expenditure, you find the deficit probably to be 300 to 500 calories below that, sometimes more. Adding 200 calories back in, they're still in a deficit. So people go, oh my gosh, I ate more and lost fat with this coach. And the coach goes, ew, baby. I don't know what the hell just happened. Uh, maybe they do know,

but a lot of them don't. That's like I said, I don't think these people are malintentioned and they go, Oh man, this is just too good to be true. They ate more with me and lost fat. And then people come out and go, Oh, with my last coach, I was eating this. And then with my new coach, I was eating so much more and still losing fat. And a lot of times it's just an increase in client compliance because they're kind of petrified of adding more calories into a situation where fat last stalled. So all this to say that I believe metabolic adaptations to be real. I believe that there is a cap on how much you can increase your metabolic rate by slowly introducing food. I do believe you should never diet linearly forever and ever and

ever. You should pay attention to when you may or may not need a diet break or a refeed. And I do believe that you should not over diet for too long. And if you do, a recovery diet is probably more effective than a reverse diet. That's my two cents on the whole thing. Third thing that I believe to be a scam is the idea of injury prevention and the idea of the, let's just say, let's just say kinesiophobic language, which is the idea that, ah, you're going to get hurt. Ah, isn't that dangerous? Oh, look at your knee angle. Oh, look at your shin angle. Oh, that's going to cause an injury. Oh, you can never have any valgus. I think that human beings are incredibly strong and incredibly resilient. And when people are injured or do have pain, it raises alarm. But the idea that certain movements are like inherently catastrophe, like dangerous, or that if you train a certain way, you can actually prevent injuries from

occurring in something that's incredibly dynamic, like sports, for example. I just don't believe that to be true. I think that what we've seen again from fitness professionals and coaches is like a couple of strength coaches who got lucky with systems where players did not get hurt. Then they make guarantees that they prevent injuries and then players go out and do get hurt. And it's like, yo, is your system legit or not? And I think the truth is sports are way too dynamic for us to sell anything as being extremely likely to prevent injuries. I think sometimes we get lucky and sometimes we don't. And I think if you train in an intelligent way for your sport, you are going to decrease the

likelihood of injury occurrence. So intelligent programming should decrease the rate of injury. Will one certain exercise protect your ACL forever? Heck no, that's crazy talk, folks. And the same thing can be said in the gym. Do deadlifts have the opportunity to be dangerous for the back if you do them poorly? They sure do. But are they writ large, dangerous, or bad for the back? Hell no. They strengthen the crap out of your back, your erectors. They help strengthen your lats isometrically, your glutes, and your hamstrings, which are

a huge part of the posterior chain. They either directly or indirectly strengthen your back. There's really no denying that a strong form deadlift, by strong form, I mean like B plus-ish form, a good deadlift is going to be way more likely to prevent back pain and discomfort than a bad form one. I believe that to be true. And I think that's mostly true of most exercises. I think a lot of people, especially in the quote unquote biomechanics crowd will be like, oh, this is so much more optimal. And it's like, yeah, that's definitely going to be more optimal for hypertrophy.

And a lot of people in the sports performance crowd will be like, oh, this is such a more safe version of that. And it's like, yes, of course, a landmine press for a pitcher overhead athlete makes more sense than like a fucking barbell press. But that is just selecting for options that are best for the individual. And it doesn't mean that the alternative options are dangerous. It just means that they're less efficient. And so I think we need to do a better job with our language of being less kinesiophobic and more what I would describe as let's be more pragmatic and optimistic and efficient. Like, hey, this exercise you're doing right here, let's say it's a dumbbell chest fly. That's pretty good. But if you want to optimize for

muscle hypertrophy, you probably want to do it on a cable so that there's more resistance on the pec throughout the entire range of motion. And it's not all concentrated kind of at the bottom when the pec is lengthened and it gets just easier and easier and easier as you go through the rep. I think that's way better. And I think that encourages a lot more people to work out. I think that kinesiophobic language hurts more than it helps. We should communicate to people the benefits of all exercises. I used to be a huge culprit of this, so I know how harmful it can be. Let's remind people that the human body is strong, adaptive, resilient, and that there's a million options that can help us train efficiently, adaptive, resilient, and that there's a million

options that can help us train efficiently and effectively, but that none of them are bad. Okay. The fourth thing, and this is less of a scam product wise, it's more of a scam ideology. And I think it's the over-intellectualization of fitness. I have so many brilliant friends in this industry that I love to have deep dives with and get really cerebral with. I think that there are so many different things from a nuanced perspective, but good, effective resistance training that can benefit your health, well-being, mental health, quality of life, and mobility doesn't have to be as complicated as a lot of professionals will make it. I used to be the king of trying to project myself

as being incredibly smart and using the most verbose, aggressive language and really going out of my way to make fitness as complicated as possible so as to position myself as an expert. And I think there's a lot of that that happens because the fitness industry is loaded with a bunch of people who want validation, not just for the way that they look, but for the way that they think. And we've over-intellectualized a lot of it. And I think there's some really brilliant people who have gone all the way up there, like all the way down the rabbit hole of over-intellectualization. And then they've popped out and emerged on the other side and are incredibly good at just taking all of that, all of that volume, all of the thoughts, all of the science and packaging it, condensing it and handing it out simply.

That is what I think people need in a world where 70% of the population is overweight or obese, right? So that's something that I think we really need to be thoughtful about and understand, which is that if we overcomplicate and over-intellectualize as professionals to position ourselves so that other people respect us more, we're making content to look smart. We're not making as much content to help people. Okay. The last thing, and this is, again, it's not a scam the way it is utilized and when it is utilized properly, it's a scam when it's not. And that is hormone replacement therapy, specifically TRT for young men. I think there are a number of young men for whom there is a legitimate reason to use testosterone replacement therapy.

But I also think that there are a lot of clinics popping up and a lot of young men who want to take advantage of the perhaps scrupulous nature of some of these clinics and some of these compounding pharmacies to get on testosterone as a steroid and as an anabolic agent. And I think we need to remember and remind people that using a therapeutic dose of a hormone is not the same as using a enhancing or performance enhancing dose of a hormone. So like to put it in perspective, if there are people who genuinely would benefit from testosterone replacement therapy and would benefit from getting to say 200 nanograms per deciliter of testosterone up to like six or seven up to a moderate to high average there are also people for whom they want to go from six to seven hundred to two thousand

and people can tank their testosterone go to a suboptimal clinic get a prescription and just start slamming slamming slamming and they never have any real reason to come off because mostly what they wanted to do is get on the drug in the first place for performance enhancement. And what it does is it kind of bastardizes hormone therapy writ large. You'll want to create an opportunity for the people who are suffering from not having enough testosterone, which is a huge deal, from going through menopause and hating that because they weren't put on hormone replacement therapy at an appropriate time. Hormone replacement therapy for menopause can be unbelievably helpful if you started early enough. I mean, some women even get put on birth control for menopause because it has a semi-stabilizing effect. The same reason that

young women get put on birth control when they have extremely volatile moods during their early menstrual cycle or the earliest stages of their menstrual cycle when they first get it. So it's like, okay, we know people benefit from this, but if people abuse it, or more importantly, if companies abuse it and they are kind of promoting hormone replacement therapy for young, two and two young people. Like I think there's, there's a number of companies that do this. Well, we've talked with experts on the podcast from Merrick. Um, I've talked with a number of people who are really big fans of inside tracker that look at and monitor these hormones. And even some of these companies can compound, uh, for you. But if there's no follow-up appointment, if the prescription just exists in perpetuity, if it's not something you're thinking

about in the long term, and you're just a young man who wants to find a way to get steroids, I think a lot of these companies are profiting off of this. And I think it could get really dangerous really quickly if you don't need them. So those are five things in the fitness industry that I think are a little scammy, that I'm not a huge fan of, and I'd love to see us clean up in 2023. If you haven't yet, guys, share this podcast with somebody that you think would benefit from it, write and leave a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify. That helps the show a ton. Thanks so much for tuning in, and I will catch you on the next one.