Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 295: How to Eat and Train for Gains with Dr. Joey Munoz

Episode Date: June 8, 2023

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What's going on, everybody? Welcome into another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. Today, I'm joined by my friend, Dr. Joey Munoz. Dr. Joey has a PhD in nutritional sciences. He is a coach. He spent time as a personal trainer, and he makes some of the best evidence-based fitness and nutrition content. He's been featured on podcasts like The Genius Life with Max Lugavere, works very closely with Titans like Lane Norton, and has some incredible lifts in his own regard. For being a really tall guy, Joey is extremely strong, has great muscularity, is very smart, and brings a lot to the table that you can learn from.

Today, we talk all about hypertrophy, nutrition, how to build muscle, the big rocks in training, how to make sure you're getting the most out of your supplementation and lifestyle. If you're interested in muscle growth and the benefits that come from having muscle with regards to your health and longevity, then you're going to love this episode with Dr. Joey Munoz. Enjoy. 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 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 electrolytes improves health, performance, body and brain performance, mind you, helps to reduce cramps and soreness and get you more hydrated. There's no sugar. LMNT is sweetened with stevia. It's perfect for exercise and perfect for the sauna because the flavors are natural, tasty, delicious,

and not overpowering. And if you're like me, you'll use them multiple times a day across your training sessions to get hydrated early to replenish after sauna use. And again, it's not just me. LMNT is the official sports drink of Team USA Weightlifting, and it's used by athletes in the NBA, NFL, Major League Baseball, as well as athletes like you and I looking to take your fitness to the next level. My favorite flavors are definitely the raspberry and citrus. 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. Dr. Joey, how are you doing my man? What's up, man? Doing great. Thank you for having me on. Absolutely. I'm glad we're getting a chance to talk. We're in the age of short-form, evidence-based fitness content. And I've been looking at yours for over a year now. And I think you have some of the cleanest, most succinct nutrition and fitness content on the internet. And even as somebody who's been doing this for a long time, that's kind of what I'm drawn to. People who I can learn from quickly, who are effective communicators. And I've really thought you've done an amazing job with the science, nutrition, and fitness communication. So I'm so stoked we're

getting a chance to chat. Dude, thank you so much for the kind words. Honestly, you'll have to thank my video editor. Behind every good content creator is a very good video editor. Yeah. No, but jokes aside, man, you know, that's the one thing I really strive to do with my videos is make them simple and easy to understand and applicable. I think when I started doing content and we were just talking about this was a little over two years ago. And I thought like the best kind of content was the type of content that would make me seem smart. And so it overcomplicates stuff

and provide additional details like that people don't really care about. So true. And just like, as more time has passed, I've tried making my stuff simpler and simpler. And I think it resonates really well with people. So I appreciate the kind words for sure. It does. I think you do a good job with it and nutrition and muscle growth are inextrable. They go together, but there are two things that I think have a tendency to get over-intellectualized because, hey, who doesn't want to sound smart? I know I've, I've did the same thing. I laugh so much at some of the content I made where I was so blatantly just trying to get intelligence clout. And it creates a lot of noise and it creates a lot of confusion. And I think when you look at the primary issues that we face from a public health standpoint, whether it be obesity,

diabetes, cardiovascular disease, clearly people are dealing with psychological issues like anxiety and depression, all of which can be positively augmented by exercising and eating a little better. I hate to see us getting lost in the weeds. So to play off of how good you are at communicating things simply, when you look at the general population and you look at the way most people live their lives, what are the non-aesthetic reasons to want to build muscle? Because I think for a lot of us, we want to look better, but there are non-aesthetic reasons to want to put on muscle mass. Yeah. So actually on my podcast, I recently recorded an episode on all the health benefits of resistance training and building muscle in particular, right? Cause we tend to think like, Oh, it's just to look better. And I'd say probably

everybody starts there with that purpose. That's fine. Like obviously looking good makes you feel better and whatever, but there's dozens of different reasons why you should lift weights. Right. And let's talk about from like a health-based perspective. And I think we can think about health from a variety of different viewpoints. If we think of health from a disease prevention or disease risk perspective, so main diseases being cardiovascular disease, diabetes, even cognitive decline as we age, Alzheimer's, those kinds of diseases. cognitive decline as we age right alzheimer's uh those kinds of diseases there's really good data showing that resistance training really reduces the risk of developing those diseases yeah so we tend to think of like i mean there's obviously a genetic component to these diseases sure weight weight is another big component that influences your risk of disease but resistance

training building muscle independent of of weight can help reduce the risk of developing these diseases right so yeah glycemic regulation lowering blood lipids improving your cholesterol improving your blood sugar which is glycemic regulation right improving your insulin sensitivity all of these things can be accomplished simply by lifting some weight so it doesn't mean you have to be a bodybuilder. It simply means do some simple resistance training two to three times a week is sufficient. If all you care about is the health benefits, right? So from a disease prevention standpoint, people ask me what's better cardio or lifting. Like I don't like to compare the two. They both have unique benefits, but lifting itself will help reduce the risk of these diseases so will cardiovascular exercise right yeah now aside from a disease prevention standpoint we can talk about health

just like how do you feel right because at the end of the day that's what most people care about like how do you feel right how do you move what's your day-to-day like and if you're somebody who has physical limitations because you have certain joint pain or perhaps you aren't that strong and doing basic things like carrying your groceries is difficult, right? All of those things can be improved with lifting some weight. So quality of life significantly improves with lifting weights, right? Especially as you get older, imagine being able to run around and play with your kids. Imagine being able to run around and play with your grand weights, right? Especially as you get older, imagine being able to run around and play with your kids. Imagine being able to run around and play with your grandkids, right? There's no reason why you're like teenage kids should be in better shape than you. Like they're not even mature adults yet, right? Totally. And weights can contribute to all those things.

And then aside from the way you feel physically, there's the way you feel mentally, right? Being happy, stress-free. I think people like, I don't know, people who don't have experience with lifting think of this and they're like, this guy's trying to sell lifting as a magic pill. It's the closest thing we've got. I'll tell you that. It really is. It really is the closest thing, right?

But from a mental health standpoint, in terms of like having mental clarity, being happy, perhaps reducing stress, uh, perhaps reducing your risk of depression, right? Like you were mentioning a little bit earlier, all of those things can be significantly improved with lifting. And again, it doesn't have to be anything fancy. It's just literally lifting some stuff, lifting some stuff, putting it down. Totally. Yeah. We can talk about the specifics of how you would train for muscle gain in particular, or like, I'm sure we, I'm sure we will. Yeah. Yeah. Or what good technique is and all that stuff. But when it comes to like the health benefits, like all of those things don't even matter. Right. It's just totally do some exercise, lift some weights.

It's fascinating when you make, when you simplify it like that, like, and as a personal trainer, I see this a lot. People come in and they tell me what you just said. Like, I want to be able to keep up with my kids. I just want to feel better. I want to be able to do things I used to do. It's like, you don't have to train like a bodybuilder to do that. You can literally pick like three or four compound lifts and do those three or four times a week. And you are probably going to be absolutely crushing it in the health, mental, and perceived feeling of wellness categories. You will just instantly hit a home run. It's pretty hard to screw it up. Now, if you want to optimize, which we'll talk about, there are a ton of

strategies. But 200,000 years as a species, and we just started sitting on our ass all day for the last 40 of it. Yeah. I think what people miss is it's not so much... I mean, obviously, how you lift is important, but you need to challenge the organism that is your meat vessel. The body that carries you around needs to be challenged. And if it's not, you see a lot of dysregulation in a lot of different areas. Yeah. If I can share a quick story talking about like how simple it can really be. Um, because I feel like oftentimes people are like, well, my knees hurt. I don't even know what

exercises to do. Right. All the time. Literally be as simple as mimicking the movements that cause discomfort. Right. And here's what I mean by that. I worked as a personal trainer, uh, back in like 2016, 2017 for about two, three years. And I had a lot of older clients who had joint pain issues. And one, one story in particular that I love sharing, man, was this older lady. She was in her seventies. She started working with me and she had really bad arthritis in her knees like pretty much bone on bone could barely sit down without like really bad pain and when she would sit she would just like plop down you know you don't control yourself on the way down

and so i'll tell you in a year she was doing full goblet squats with 40 pounds full range of motion no pain how did we get there all we did was sit and stand and progress it over time right so generally what i recommend people is like whatever movement hurts limit the range of motion and do it in a range of motion that feels comfortable slash slightly uncomfortable yeah and do that regularly three or four times a week and that discomfort zone will start to improve over time. You'll be able to get better range of motion, right? So with this lady, when we first started, she could barely bend her knees like 10 degrees without pain. So we just started by bending 10 degrees and then it was 15 and then it was 20

slowly, but surely over a couple months, she could sit to 90 degrees pain-free with full control. Right? So that's one of the things when you do these exercises, you want to make sure you're but surely over a couple months she could sit to 90 degrees pain-free with full control right so that's one of the things when you do these exercises you want to make sure you're controlling yourself you're not just like throwing it around right because you're trying to provide a small stressor and then your body is going to adapt to that stressor and become stronger so if you too much at once then that can be potentially detrimental um and then when she was doing the the body weight squats to 90 degrees we added added five pounds, 10 pounds, literally in a year, she was doing four inch motion, 40 pound goblet squats. And we did nothing for her knees except

sit and stand. So if like your shoulder hurts, just move your shoulder. It's really that simple. It sure can be. And you hit on something that's huge. The number one reason outside of people saying that they don't have the time for not engaging in resistance training specifically, but I think physical activity writ large is that there's some pain associated with movement and people are concerned that resistance training, because it is seen as being super macho, it's for bros, it's for bodybuilders, it's for athletes. It seems like, okay, well, got to be the most advanced place to start. And I think what personal trainers or people who have done personal training in their career realize is like 90% of the people you work with come to you with next to no fitness and you're doing exercises that look a lot more like physical therapy until they start to look like weight lifting. And really, if you are in pain, to your point, the best thing you can probably do

is to move that joint, move that tissue through the most pain-free range of motion you possibly can. And then as discomfort starts to build, you'll expand what you can tolerate and you slowly load it. And that shit works for almost everything. Because when you're a personal trainer, sometimes you're like, I don't know what to do, but let's try the thing that's the least likely to make you not come back. And it works. It works. And I think that hearing that from somebody like you is like, okay, that's encouraging.

I don't have to sweat it so much. Like doctor's orders, right? These are things that we see all the time really working for people. And I don't know, I think there's just a big misconception around the safety of resistance training. I think it's about as safe as you can get if you do it right. Yeah. It's probably the safest type of exercise, really. It's not high impact, right? If you're controlling the weight, it's pretty damn safe. Like injury risk per like thousand hours of training is way lower than any other sport, particularly if you're

training for hypertrophy specifically. And if you're using machines, like even safer, right. I know we talk a lot about the benefits of free weights and stuff, but like machines are fantastic. I feel like they're very underrated too. And if performed correctly, they can be extremely helpful. And then the one thing I really wanted to touch on is like, you said something that's really important that i feel like everybody can resonate with that's like people are afraid to do stuff because they have pain and pain does not mean you shouldn't do something for a particular body part or joint right great point it's like and i've tried to explain this before and and by no means am i a pain scientist and there's a lot

of like really cool research in this area. But just because you're experiencing pain does not mean you actually have an injury. And the opposite is true too. You can have an injury and not be experiencing pain, right? You see UFC fighters like break another femur. They're like tibia, like snap. Sure. They probably had stress fractures prior to that, which is an

injury. I can promise you they weren't really feeling any pain there. Right. So you can have injuries without feeling pain and you can have pain without, without having an injury. You can have both, but they're not correlated like a hundred percent of the time. Right. And most times if you're feeling like some elbow pain or a little bit of shoulder pain or some knee discomfort, that's usually not an injury. I honestly can't sit here and tell you why we experience these kinds of pains. I know we do, but it's definitely not an indicator that you shouldn't move and actually moving and stressing that joint and being okay with feeling a little bit of pain will put you in a much better place than not doing anything at all. Yeah. It's weird. Like people don't move because they're in pain and then they stay in pain

because they don't move. And when I'm not a pain scientist either, I'm not a scientist at all, but like when I started learning, cause I, the clinic that I run, it's just half strength and conditioning, half physical therapy. So I have physical therapists in there and I hear what they say to the patients. And I'm always keying in on it. And the amount of times I hear them communicating, look, just because you're in pain doesn't mean that there's any tissue damage. And people come in with image results. I had a client come in, she had an MRI done, and she had hardly any pain. And she gets the MRI back and she has like two

bulging discs. And all of a sudden there's pain in that part of her body. And I say, when are you getting the imaging interpreted? Oh, not till May 16th, which just so happens to be today. But I was like, man, this was like a month ago. I was like, that's like a whole month of not knowing. So I said, when you come in, bring it with you, we'll let the PT read it to you. And the PT is like, oh, you know, all this stuff is actually pretty normal age related change in the body. And all of a sudden that pain went away. So it's, there is a psychological and a social component to how we experience pain. And like And if you look at imaging, there are baseball pitchers who have just absolutely destroyed their shoulders and they will pitch 200 innings a year

and you don't want to show them the imaging. Don't let them know because if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And the body is so adaptive and resilient that when you hear just how safe weightlifting can be, I think it's a great pathway out of pain because you're quite literally cultivating some degree of resilience when you're pushing into a hard set. Yeah. Pain is extremely perceptual, man. It's weird. It really isn't. And people who lift a lot know how to push into it. And so I think that there's some degree of expansion of tolerance that can come from doing things like this. So let's say you've got somebody and we've established like this is a baseline for what you probably want to do to build muscle,

lift a couple times a week, definitely focus on compounds, push yourself a little bit. What about for those of us who are pretty determined that they'd like to change their physique? They want to be bigger. They want to be leaner. What are the kind of central, no BS, need to get done things? Because there is so much fluff. Yeah.

So should we talk about training principles first? I think so. We'll talk about training for optimal muscle growth or to maximize what you're working with. And then I'd love to hear how you can support that with nutrition and lifestyle. Because I think people are usually good at one of the three, but two of them they need work with. hypertrophy, which is building muscle is what it's my bread and butter. Like it's what I love doing. And honestly, I'll give a shout out here to Dr. Mike is retail because his content has helped me tremendously. He's the goat when it comes to this stuff, man. He's so fantastic. His YouTube page is Renaissance periodization for anybody who wants to check it out. Mike's been on the pod. He is, he is a regular. He's a man. Yeah, dude. He's yeah. He's incredible. Um, but okay. If we, if we talk about training for hypertrophy, uh, you can get lost in the weeds here and there's

a lot of little nuance in, in all of these areas that I'll talk about, but I'll talk about some of the main variables that you should focus on. If you want to train with an emphasis on maximizing muscle growth. Perfect. Yeah. I guess some of the first questions people ask is like, what training split should I follow? How many days per week should I train? And in general, the training splits that you follow doesn't matter at all. Literally does not matter at all. Which on its face is like paradigm shattering. Yeah. Probably 85% of people who are listening. Cause that's where they start. I want that. That's where people spend the majority of their time. What program should I follow? They can't get past that part.

Yeah. And that's the least important part. As long as you're not doing a traditional bodybuilding split where you train each muscle once per week, as long as you're not doing that, you're probably good. It is ironic how the protocols that work the best for dudes who are on like enhancements that might be pharmacological just are, I don't want to say clearly suboptimal, but they're not, they're definitely not optimal for naturals. Yeah. Yeah. They're suboptimal. And I'd say it's even suboptimal for that type of person as well. It's just for some reason, that's the way people have been training. Because if you look at Mike, he's enhanced and he trains with actual scientific principles and he's freaking jacked yes but if we talk about splits the split itself doesn't matter what matters is how frequently you train a muscle gotcha right and different splits allow you to train muscles with different frequency and in reality you really want to

train each muscle at least twice per week gotcha for hypertrophy training more than twice per week may not be necessary for the majority of people. For more advanced lifters, if you want to really specialize and bring up one particular muscle, maybe training it more frequently might be beneficial. But as long as you're training muscles at least twice per week, you're good. And how far apart should those sessions be? Ideally, you want to space them out evenly throughout the week, right? Cool. Three, four days in between the same muscle group.

Now, I say there's nuance here because if you're training a muscle three or four times per week, it's different. Yeah. What really matters is that the total amount of work that you're doing for a muscle is evenly spaced out to do the week as best as possible. We'll talk about sets in a second, but let's say you're doing 15 sets for your quads and you're going to do that in two sessions. Well, one should be about seven sets. The other should be about eight sets and maybe separate those three or four days in between. Right. Perfect. And now in terms of how many days you want to train, you can make gains with three days per week. In theory, the more days you train, the better because you can handle more volume, right? Like I train five days per week. Personally, if I did that total amount of work

in three days, I just wouldn't be able to, it's just too much. So you can make really good gains training three days per week. Four is arguably better. Five is arguably a little bit better. The more advanced you become, the more work you should be doing to continue to progress and perhaps having more days is beneficial. Right. But main things I want you to take away from this so far is strange muscle, at least two times per week. Now, if we go one step beyond this, and by the way, dude, I am literally about to publish an episode on this particular topic, like training principles for muscle hypertrophy.

We'll link it in the show notes. We'll link it in the show notes. I'll go into these topics in a lot more detail, but on the volume side of things, right? So we've got how many days you're gonna train. Now it's like, how much should you be doing in terms of number of sets? The research really shows if you're training with like 10 sets per muscle group per week,

it's a pretty good starting place to get really good gains. Now, again, same thing here. In theory, more is better. If you can do more, given that you're training hard. Yeah, that's so important, man. That's really something that the more I train people and the more I communicate the importance of that, the more it just reigns true. That's a huge one. Yeah. People don't train hard enough. Right. And so they think they need to do more and more. It's like, you're not even close to like a three or four RIR, which is reps in reserve, right? You're doing a set and you still have like seven or eight reps left in the tank. It's like, you really need to push your body near its limits. That in itself is a skill that you learn probably a year or two after training.

Like it takes time to, to really learn. Absolutely true. And you almost start to realize like the more experienced you are with lifting, the less work you can do. Cause like you really learn how to push your body. Right. So it's like, man, I just can't do that much work. You nailed it.

I mean, it's remarkable how like even seven, eight, I'm almost nine years in now. I'll catch myself and I'll do a set to pretty much failure and I'll be on the second set of an exercise. I'll be like, I'm just done that, that I'm done with that exercise. Like that's it. I do, I do max three sets on an exercise. That's a lot. Really, I usually do about two sets on an exercise and I really push them. And for a session, if I'm training a muscle twice per week, I'll do six or seven sets for a muscle and I'm fried.

Yes. And if I train a muscle three times per week, I might do four or five sets for the session. And even then I'm fried, dude. And you get better. Dr. Joey's right. You get a lot better at figuring this out as you when you first start you probably want to be five six reps from failure so that you can learn the pattern learn how to perform the exercise properly like drill your reps and it's

like kind of like a golf swing you just need to like practice the swing you don't even get to swing hard yet because if you do, you'll fuck it up. But when you're actually making contact and hitting the ball and then you start swinging hard, it's like, oh, wow, I really don't need to swing that much to get the ball where I need it to go. When you suck, you got to hit it a million times to get it on the green. But that's okay because you're learning. Yeah. And you shouldn't rush it, right? It just takes time to learn. I like to use an analogy here it's like people think of like lifting as just like strength related and it's just as much

skill right like yeah that's a great point a basketball player shoots 100 200 300 free throws a day like lifting itself is a skill and like you wouldn't expect to play basketball the first time in your life and like know how to cross the ball over or do any flashy moves. You just don't, you don't have the muscle memory, right? It's like, you can't expect to like do a squat perfectly the first time and not just even do it perfectly. It's like when you start loading it, your body's like shaking. It's like, you don't know what you're doing. So you don't even have the capacity to push your limits.

Like you don't, not, not safely anyway. Yeah. Not safely anyway. Right. Like, yeah, you just can't because you can't coordinate your muscle contraction, like the way it has to work. So it just takes years to really develop that. Um, but you know, if you, like we were talking about doing at least 10 sets per muscle per week, you're in a good place. If you train hard place. Yeah. Like that's a lot of work. Yes, it is. Yeah. Uh, but if you're training hard and you're recovering properly and recovering just means like on the most basic definition of the term recovery is like, are you making progress? Yeah. Are you able to increase what you do on a weekly basis versus

like the opposite where you're seeing backsliding? Do you not feel like you're dragging your ass from day to day? Right. Because that's another really good indicator to like, sometimes people are prioritizing their nutrition, their training, and they just feel like exhausted. And they're probably just doing a little bit too much. Yeah. Especially if you have a really demanding job and like a bunch of like personal responsibilities with family, and maybe you have a small child and you don't sleep well, which is a situation I'm in currently, like it all adds up.

Right. Yeah. But so far we've talked about, you know, training frequency, uh, intensity, right. And total volume. Those are three of the main variables. And the last thing I would really touch on to keep this like pretty simple in terms of recommendations is exercise selection, right? Like you mentioned, maybe start with mainly compound movements and start with stable exercises.

People want to do random shit, like single leg, I don't know, RDL while like your hands above your head and you're like scratching your back. Like don't overcomplicate stuff. Use the most basic exercises because the basic exercises work. Use exercises that when you finish the set, it feels like your muscle is tired

and not your overall body is tired. I think that's a really good indicator, right? So true. When you do a heavy set of leg press, like your quads are screaming. If you do a set of squats on a BOSU ball, like it might be really hard, like in terms of your balance, you might be breathing heavy. It might be exhausting, but it's not as locally fatiguing in the muscle as a very stable exercise, right? Which is so important for muscle growth, right? You'll get all the health benefits we talked about from doing your stupid BOSU ball

single leg overhead RDL because you're contracting your tissue, but good luck getting it to grow. Yeah. And maybe if you're trying to better your balance, that might be a little bit better. I mean, if you're trying to like improve reaction time or some other aspect of your fitness, like what you guys need to understand is that like, there is no best exercise for everything, right? The type of exercise that you do and the way you train should be specific to the outcome that you want. So everything we're talking about here is muscle growth in particular, right? Like if you were telling me, how do I optimize my strength?

Well, a lot of this stuff would be similar, but different. The outcome determines how you train. That's so true. Yeah. Exercise selection, compound movements, start with compound movements, make sure you choose stable movements. And it's interesting because from a hypertrophy perspective, if we talk about purely hypertrophy, you can argue that a lot of machines are better than favorites. I would agree. A paradigm shattering recommendation, no doubt. But I've come to believe this myself, especially if you want to have a long training career

because output is important. And when you can control for a variable like stability, you can ratchet your output up and keep it safe. Yes. And fatigue is lower too. Like overall fatigue and you can handle more volume, but it's like, if you're trying to optimize like your strength or maybe like how much an exercise translates to like real life, yes, free weight movements are better. Yes. Right. But purely from a muscle growth perspective, I would argue that a leg press is probably one of the best things you can do for your legs, a hack squat, something like that. Because one of the issues with free weights is that as you're fatiguing, the balance aspect

is a lot harder. You start shaking form breaks down. So you have a ton of other things to focus on versus just contracting the muscle. Whereas on a leg press, you can really push it to failure pretty safely. Yeah. And you're just going to feel a ton of local fatigue in the quads and the glutes. I actually feel a lot more stimulus from like a leg press or a hack squat on my quads than I do a barbell back squat. And I do them all, right? I do a back squat, but I recognize that like the feeling locally in the muscle is not the same, even if I'm doing the same rep range at the same intensity. Totally.

Right. So start with compound movements. Make sure you have the main compound movements for all the major muscle groups, a vertical and horizontal push and pull for the upper body, some sort of squatting movement and some sort of hip hinge movement for the lower body. That pretty much covers everything. Yes. And then do some isolation movements for exercises or for muscles that you want to bring up more,

right? Typically calves, hamstrings, hamstrings don't get that much direct work from something like just an RDL, right? Sure. And then perhaps some arm works and lateral delts and stuff like that. And then if you want to get some more chest work, whatever isolations should compliment the compound movements to get more volume in the muscles that you want to focus on a little bit more. It's perfectly succinct. Yeah, dude, that's pretty much the main overview, right? And I guess the last main question that people have is like rep ranges and it doesn't

really matter. Like as long as you're pushing the intensity, the rep range doesn't matter. You could literally train with six reps. You could train with 20, 25 reps. If the intensity is there, the hypertrophic stimulus is going to be pretty similar across rep ranges. Now, I think there's some practical things to take into account. Like you probably don't want to be doing a set of 20 on barbell squats. It's just not necessary. Yeah. Right. So certain exercises lend themselves to different rep ranges because a big compound movement,

if you do a ton of reps, is going to be more cardiovascular fatiguing than anything. So big, heavy movements generally lend themselves to lower rep ranges, whereas isolation movements, you also don't want to be doing a set of five on lateral raises. Yeah. You're going to snap your shoulder. You're going to snap your elbow, right? Like it's just not necessary. It might be effective, but you probably would get a much better training stimulus from going to 12 to 15, 20 reps on those types of exercises. Totally. I love that. Pretty much it, man. I think that's, that summar reps on those types of exercises. Totally. I love that. That's pretty much it, man. I think that summarizes like 90% of it, probably.

It really does. I think the one thing I would add to this, because you covered everything, everybody has a different degree of mobility. And as you progress, if you have the ability to optimize for technique and a range of motion over like, I just want to jump up and wait.

In the long run, it will probably be better for your training career, your muscle growth, as well as your just the overall resilience and capacity of your body to train through the fullest range of motion you can. So if you start and you're like, man, these leg presses are great. I'm getting my quads to my freaking chest. I'm going to throw another plate on there. When you throw another plate on there, you can't go down as far. Throw a quarter plate on there. Throw a 10. I think a lot of people forget that the range of motion is something that's very important. And when it's possible to train through a full range of motion, instead of jumping up

to a weight that makes you limit the range of motion, it'll give you a longer runway to train. It'll probably keep all of your tissues and joints that much more resilient. And it's great for hypertrophy to train tissues through a full range of motion. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So range of motion is a great variable to bring up. And I'm always a huge proponent of maximizing range of motion before anything else.

And you have great technique too, for a guy who I think is pretty tall. Like you got to be like... Yeah, do them six five, bro. Yeah. So that's fucking insane. So like I've watched Dr. Joey bury three plates plus on squats through a full range of motion. And I would bet my ass if he was like cool with quarter repping or half repping with the training career he's had, he could be at four plates, five plates. But if you're doing reps with three plates at over six feet tall, how much,

you don't need that much more weight. Like the amount you are, the, the range that you are training that tissue through is huge. Yeah, dude, it's really tough, man. But like, it's funny because, and since you brought up numbers, when I was probably like 19, 20 years old, I used to do the quarter squats and I was way weaker than I am now. I was doing 365 for like a five by five and it was a quarter squat. I was like, man, I'm hella strong. And then one day I learned about like range of motion, like maximizing range of motion. I'm like, all right, I'm going to do squats with a full range of motion. I knew I would have to drop weight, but I was like maybe 365. I'll drop to like 325 or something like that. Dude, I went down to one plate, 135 and I can barely do like five or six reps. It was so hard.

And so I just had to like build back up and I'm even like 10 years. Well, close to 10 years later, I'm not where I was with the quarter squats. It's crazy. Your legs got bigger. Substantially. Yeah. And that's one thing I want to talk about. Like with all my clients, I forced them to maximize range of motion because it's something that everybody can learn, right? It makes you more mobile. But then from a hypertrophy perspective, actually stretching your muscle induces, stretching your muscle under load induces hypertrophy independent of other

variables right they've shown this they have dudes who sit under their freaking desk with their calves stretched for eight hours at a time those men suffered so that you can make gains with less weight when you train through a four-inch motion yeah yeah and it's not even about like purposefully using less weight it's about like doing the exercise correctly right because i'd argue that it's, it's not that you are getting more out of less weight. It's that you're actually doing the exercise correctly. It's a great way to use too much weight and they're not doing the exercise correctly. Right. So it's like, if you're going to squat to grow your quads, your hamstrings should be touching your calves or you should be aiming for that. Right. Because the more you bend your knee, the more stretch you get in the quad, the better hypertrophic

stimulus you're going to get from that particular exercise. Pull-ups, go to a dead hang, fully stretch your back, bench press, touch your chest, right? Like these are all low hanging fruits that it's not even like most people don't even have mobility issues. Most people just use too much weight. Yeah, it is. It is remarkable how many people like will come in and be like, oh, I have terrible mobility.

And I'm like, really? Let's see it. I'm like, it looks great. It looks great. You can do it perfectly. Or one thing that a lot of coaches do is it's like, oh my gosh, my client's knees are just caving in on squats. It's like, well, did you tell them that's not supposed to happen? And you tell them and they can correct it. We are very capable of organizing our body and performing exercises well. We just need to practice it and rehearse it and literally do the reps. And so if you're in that initial phase, to Dr. Joey's point, pick somewhere between three to five days, try to focus on a push, a pull, a squat, a hinge.

Those are your bedrock patterns. And if you're new, just fucking do those anyway, anyway because in two to three years everything you do is going to be an expansion of that it's like oh i want to do bulgarian split squats cool do squats first because that's like a squat on one leg and if you get good at that that will be easier yeah and then like you said like rep ranges are really confusing because it seems like there's so much different shit out there, but as long as the set's hard and you're not like, and you use like even an ounce of intuition, like you're going to know like, oh, I did a set of six lateral raises that, that sucked like 15, 15 feels better. And like 15 squats put me in the grave. So like six to eight, it's better do it through a full range of motion and try to do it kind of

close to failure. And you're pretty much there. Dude, talking about the point that most people use too much weight to ask you a question, what rep in a set should be the hardest? The first one or the last one? The last one. Last one, right? Why do so many people struggle on their first rep of dumbbell chest press? Say have selected a weight that is too heavy. Too heavy, right? so that first rep it's like super deep and they can barely get it up and then they have somebody help them get it up and they get it they get another 15 reps after that how they only come away come down half halfway right like it's like even on a double chest press that first rep should be your easiest

because every single rep should be equally as deep in theory. You should come down nice and slow, get the full stretch in the chest and every rep should be from the same position as your first repetition. So if you're listening to this and you relate, cause I feel like that's the one exercise that people like clicks, right? It's like a dumbbell chest press that first rep, you shouldn't need somebody to help you bring it up. And I've even had clients say things to me like, Oh, like I need to go with a spotter to the gym. Cause I can't get the first rep up. It's like, yo, just drop the weight and go way deeper, like go way deeper. And you'll find that the exercise is so much more effective. You'll get so much of a better stimulus in the chest, a better stretch, a better pump. Those things on their own are not indicative of muscle growth, but they are a good

indicator that that muscle is working. Yes. Right. So it's like, just it's ego, man. It's mainly young dudes, right? It's mainly young dudes. Let's be honest. Nobody wants to grow muscle more than young dudes looking to get laid. It's not breaking news. It's been that way for human history. But I think if you do all of these things, you'll be in a fabulous position to build muscle, but you will not build much if you don't have the nutrition on point. And I think that there are a number of things that one ought to consider when it comes to mind for me are, are you getting enough calories? Are you getting enough carbohydrates? And are you getting enough protein? And so expand on that because as I understand it, nutrition is really your big forte. What do people need to do nutritionally to put their body in a position independent of their current weight? Some people want to build muscle and lose fat, but what are the things you need to do with nutrition to support muscle growth and recovering from this training? Sure. I guess let's talk about a prototypical person trying to focus on

building muscle mainly. Okay. Because guys, when you start like anything you do will improve your body composition, right? If you start focusing on nutrition a little bit, you start lifting weights a little bit, you're going to build muscle. You can lose fat and build muscle at the same time. Yes, you can. Now let's talk about maybe a step further than that. Somebody who is perhaps not a complete beginner anymore and they really want to optimize muscle growth specifically. Okay. So let's talk about nutrition here. Hierarchy of importance. Most important thing is total energy intake, for sure. It's like, listen, if you want to

optimize building muscle, you have to slowly gain weight. There's no way around it. There it is. That's the soundbite folks. Yeah. You can maintain, you can maintain your body weight, build some muscle. Sure. But it's going to be way slower. And you're, you're just like, not really going to be content with your progress. If you want to optimize building muscle, really commit to gaining some weight, right? Now, the issue most people have is that they gain weight too quickly. They think like, if I just eat as much as possible, dirty bulking, I'm going to get jacked. I think you've probably made that mistake. I've made that mistake. I've made that mistake.

I've made that mistake. I've made that mistake. Yeah, dude. I blew up from, okay. So I graduated high school in 2012 and I was about 180 pounds at six, five. So I was like super skinny. And then I blew up to 220 my freshman year of college. And it was just like pounding food. Yeah.

Like 32 ounces of chocolate milk with like pizza. Like I was just eating. Right. And I just got way too thick, way too quick. I like that. So, so I think that's the main approach that people take. And I don't think there's anything wrong with dirty bulking approach because at least you learn this with experience. Right. But building muscle is an extremely, extremely slow process. Yeah. And you won't build more muscle just because you eat more. Yeah. You might build marginally more muscle, but you will build, you will gain exponentially

more fat. Right. So it's not, it's not ideal from a, from a sustainability standpoint. And so I think traditionally what people try to gain like a pound a week, that's ridiculous. That's really rapid. Like that's if you're brand new, you'd be the greatest muscle builder ever still. It's 52 pounds of muscle in a year, which is like a lifetime's worth of muscle growth. And what people don't realize is like, at least half of that is fat. Right. Um, and more than half of it is fat, like the more experienced you are, but I'd probably recommend gaining weight at no more than like a pound a month, which is substantially slower. Right. I think that's a really good rate of weight gain. You're gaining maybe 10 to 15 pounds in a year. I've been slowly gaining weight over the past year and a half, and I've put on

about 20 pounds now. Okay. People will pull that, put that on in three months, dude. Like you just can't, you cannot gain appreciable muscle mass in three months, unless you're a complete beginner. And even then three months is just not enough time, right? So make sure you're in a position where you feel comfortable gaining weight and commit to gaining weight for at least nine to 12 months, at least if you want to see actual changes in your body composition and your strength, because yes, you're going to get stronger, but also understand that when you lean back out, you're going to lose a little bit of that strength. So you want to gain a good amount of strength so that when you lose some, you're still above where you were previously. And that takes time.

And that can be accomplished by literally being at maybe like a 200, 300 calorie surplus. It's minimal. Which basically just means like you're eating 200 to 300 calories more than whatever it is your body needs to operate. Yes. And I honestly don't even track my calories. Like what I just do is I weigh myself regularly and I can kind of intuitively eat a little bit more, eat a little bit less, right? It's super simple. And like, if one month I'm a little bit heavier than I'd like, maybe I just eat a little bit less for the next week or two and maybe my weight comes down. So I'm not like perpetually in

a gaining phase, I guess every once in a while, I'm a little bit less, you know, but just to maintain my weight within appropriate parameters. And that's a very simple way of doing it for me. Yeah, it is. But you know, you want to gain weight slowly. Energy balance is really the most important thing when we're talking about optimized nutrition.

Let's take it a step further. Now we talk about particular nutrients, right? Protein. Everybody knows protein is important. I think most people, there's nothing wrong with eating a ton of protein is important i think most people there's nothing wrong with eating a ton of protein but i think a lot of people overdo it too like yeah the whole gram per pound is great you can eat that much and you're fine but you definitely

don't need that much no yeah like especially if you're in a gaining phase like actually when you're cutting you need more protein than when you're gaining because keep you full it helps keep you full but you're actually using some of that protein for energy production versus just the biological processes that go into building muscle. So when you're eating more food surplus, you actually spare some of that protein. So you actually don't need as much protein. And the research pretty much clearly shows if you're eating about like 0.7, 0.8 grams per pound of body weight, which is about 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight, you're in a good place. pound of body weight, which is about 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight, you're in a good place.

Right. So for a 200 pound person getting 160, 180 grams of protein, you're good. If you want to get 200 grams, there's nothing wrong with that. It's just, it's a lot for some people. It is. It is. It's definitely tough. Yeah. And the more protein you eat, like the less of other stuff you can eat too. And like you mentioned a little while ago, carbs are important. Like you definitely don't want to follow a low carb diet if you care about your performance and building muscle. Now people listen to this stuff and they're like, but my friend is keto and he got jacked. Guys, I'm not saying that you can't make progress in other ways, but if we're talking about optimizing progress, carbohydrates are incredibly important for performance. Yes, you can get stronger. You can build muscle if you follow a low carb diet. It's just not optimal. You'll make better progress eating sufficient

carbohydrates. What's going on guys, taking a break from this episode to tell you a little bit about my coaching company, Core Coaching Method. More specifically, our app-based training. We partnered with Train Heroic to bring app-based training to you using the best technology and best user interface possible. You can join either my Home Heroes team, or you can train from home with bands and dumbbells, or Elite Physique, which is a female bodybuilding-focused program where you can train at the gym with equipments designed specifically to help you develop strength as well as the glutes, hamstrings, quads, and back. I have more teams coming planned for a variety of different fitness levels. But what's cool about this is when you join these programs, you get programming that's

updated every single week, the sets to do, the reps to do, exercise tutorials filmed by me with me and my team. So you'll get my exact coaching expertise as to how to perform the movement, whether you're training at home or you're training in the gym. And again, these teams are somewhat specific. So you'll find other members of those communities looking to pursue similar goals at similar fitness levels. You can chat, ask questions, upload form for form review, ask for substitutions. It's a really cool training community and you can try it completely free for seven days. Just

click the link in the podcast description below. Can't wait to see you in the Core Coaching Collective, my app-based training community. Back to the show. Yeah, there are very few athletes who compete in sports that are primarily glycolytic and that require a substantial amount of muscle mass who follow a low-carbohydrate diet. That is a big disconnect between the health space and the

kind of performance space. A lot of people follow low carbohydrate diets because they can help people get lean because there's caloric reduction. And a lot of really fit people follow them for different reasons. And so they go, that dude's jacked. I'm going to do that. But the most jacked people who also perform at a high level eat a lot of carbohydrates and they don't apologize about it. Yeah. And if we actually look at the research on this, fatigue sets in earlier on low-carb diets, right? So you get tired quicker and you have a higher rate of perceived exertion. and you have a higher rate of perceived exertion. So stuff feels objectively more hard, right? Yeah.

I shouldn't say more hard. Doctor saying more hard. What am I saying? It should feel harder, right? Like it will feel harder if you have low carbohydrates compared to eating out of a carbohydrate. And what that means like is if you can typically lift a hundred pounds for 10 repetitions on an exercise you might still be able to do that but it's going to feel objectively a lot harder and so when it feels

objectively a lot harder your overall workout intensity is a little bit lower yeah and it's the same it's the same similar effect to like if you get poor sleep or you're dehydrated it's like yeah you could probably still train and you could probably get pretty similar numbers but shit just feels harder right and if that accumulates over time it influences your workout quality which influences your progress so you definitely want to eat adequate carbohydrates and it's guys it's not that hard you don't have to like target a specific amount of carbohydrates either just like just eat carbs with your meals love that it's It's dude. It's so simple. Like for a meal, if we're going to talk about what a plate should look like, put adequate protein on your plate. Right. And it's like however much protein you need, split it up into three or four doses and just make sure that's on

your plate. Usually your protein source might cover your fat source as well. So like, you don't have to think about adding fat, right? Happens a lot. Make sure you get at least a handful or so of veggies on there and then just like put some carbs on your plate for your caloric needs. Right. And if you're not tracking your calories, just put some carbs on there until you feel full. And like, that's, that's pretty much it. The carbs aren't going to magically make you fat or anything like that. Here's an interesting question here. Cause I love the visual of like, let's put a plate together. Cause I think that's where like 80% of people are at. And that's like, just what people need to hear. Um, you know, getting enough protein and getting enough carbohydrates are things that people tend to struggle with. What I have found is, uh, for

people who have come from a background of thinking like low carbohydrate is the way to go. They really struggle to get enough carbs. For almost everybody I work with, initially, they struggle to get enough protein. Obviously, you have different meat and grains, but what are some of your go-to sources of protein? They can be snacks, carbohydrates. They can be snacks that you think are practical for people who are like, I'm on the go. I got stuff to do. I want to support getting more of these things in, but I don't know the first place to look. And I'm not just going to throw open my George Foreman grill and plug it into my car cigarette lighter and cook up a chicken breast.

So from a protein perspective first, obviously with your meals, if you eat meat, ideally you get to meet with your meals. But if you're traveling and you still want to get your protein in and maybe we talk about some easy sources of protein, like you can't beat whey protein, right? Protein is super easy to travel with. It's not like a drug or some weird supplement. It's literally isolated from dairy. Yeah. So if you drink milk, if you eat you eat cheese if you have yogurt all of those things have whey protein in it whey protein is

literally isolated from dairy okay um so whey protein powder is like number one anytime i travel i bring it with me it's super easy aside from that if we talk about actual food choices um i go heavy on dairy like people think dairy is inflammatory it's bad for you it's not it's actually if we're going to talk about inflammation it actually has pretty potent anti-inflammatory properties but aside from that uh greek yogurt is fantastic right like greek yogurt easy to travel with you're getting a general rule of thumb that i like danny is things that have one gram of protein per 100 calories have one gram of protein per a hundred calories or sorry, one gram of protein per 10 calories. So about 10 grams of protein. I really like that. I really like that. That's about 40% protein. That's a really good source of protein.

Yeah. And if you guys are thinking where'd I get that 40%, a gram of protein is four calories, right? So four calories out of 10 calories, 40% protein, uh, things that fall into that category whey protein, we just mentioned Greek yogurt would fall fall into that category i'm a huge fan of like the low-fat skim milk mozzarella sticks oh yeah oh yeah i love those are about i think those are like six or seven grams of protein per like 70 calories so that fits perfectly um and then really like if we're talking about traveling there's nothing wrong with eating like stuff either, right? Yep. Again, there's... And guys, if you, for some reason, are listening to this and feel like some particular foods are bad or unhealthy for you, please go check out all of my content on why foods are not bad for you, right?

There's nothing wrong with eating canned tuna or whatever. It just meets your macronutrient requirements. It's easy to get in. So those are the main sources that I would use for protein when traveling. It's really hard with protein because I still stick to mainly getting meat when I can. If I'm going out to eat, let's say I'm going to Chipotle, I'll just get a double portion of meat. I think meat is pretty easily accessible even if you're traveling anywhere. You might just have to modify your food choices. If you're going to go somewhere might just have to modify your food choices, right? Yeah.

If you're going to go somewhere, perhaps don't just get the entree the way it is on the menu, because that's probably not going to be very protein rich. You can ask for some modifications, maybe getting a double portion of protein. Pay the extra $8 for double meat. Or what you do is you get the entree and then you just have a scoop of protein powder on the side. The biggest hack in fitness is having a shake before you go out to eat. Because you're like, oh, I have 40 grams of protein added to my meal right there. Can't mess up for under two bucks. Yeah. Dude, and on the carb source side of things, it's super easy.

Like the main things I eat is white rice, right? And you can even like, if you're traveling and you want to prepare your meals, you can buy like little pre-packaged things of white rice that you just toss in the microwave. Like what is it? Uncle Ben's. Yeah. Uncle Ben's. Yep. Yeah. Uncle Ben's. Right. Or I think they got canceled because that was like somehow not kosher. So any, any ambiguous racially sensitive microwave rice is fine guys. Yes, exactly. Microwave rice, have that. And then honestly, just fruit, man.

I eat a lot of fruit. It's so easy to just eat fruit. You don't have to cook it. You can travel with it. I probably do. You might think this is crazy. I probably have three bananas or so a day. Yeah, my fruit intake is off the charts. And my fruit intake went up the more idiots on the

internet who started saying not to eat fruit. And the more you guys learn... This is one of the cool things with nutrition. People get really focused. They're looking for the next superfood, these nutrient-dense foods that you never heard of. They're all already in your produce section. Fru, fruits are so nutrient dense. They have incredibly better, like one of my favorite fruits, super random, but like things like pineapples and papayas and mangoes and people are out here like, oh, I'm looking for this. It's supposed to be good for my gut health. I was like, bro, nothing's better for your gut health than a papaya.

Go eat some papaya. Take the first shit you've had in a week and come and talk to me. Go to the grocery store and buy some fruit you've never had before. There's so many different kinds. They have so much unique and incredible micronutrients. They have plant compounds that are super beneficial for your body. All the bullshit on the internet about them being dangerous for you is pure garbage. And these fruits, some of them, I love apricots apricots i find out have more glucose than like any other fruit but they also have a good amount of fructose so it's like you know what a perfect pre-workout is is freaking apricots you go to you go eat

six seasonal apricots in a day easily i could eat 10 they're amazing and they're good for you yeah dude yeah i mean i agree with you 100 fruit is easy like my go-to is banana because it has a day easily. I could eat 10. They're amazing. And they're good for you. Yeah, dude. Yeah. I mean, I agree with you a hundred percent fruit is easy. Like my go-to is banana because it has appeal and it's easy to travel with, but any, any fruit guys, like any fruit is a fantastic source of carbohydrate. It's rich in micronutrients and something you touched on that's really important is the phytonutrient component, so these are compounds in fruits and vegetables that aren't classified as vitamins because they're not vital yeah in other words like we don't need them to survive oh my god i just i just realized that they share that root i've been doing this 10 years

folks and vita must be so vitamin comes vital amine like you know acid and when when vitamins were first discovered some they they thought some of them were had like amine containing sure i didn't know that though that's where the word even thought about that before you know something every day folks but a lot of these phytonutrients dude they can be really beneficial for your health and they can have like potent anti-inflammatory properties which is arguably really beneficial for your health and they can have like potent anti-inflammatory properties, which is arguably really good for your health as well. And when you were talking about like plant compounds being bad for you or whatever, like what Paul Saladino is like one of the biggest proponents of this, right? Like defense chemicals. So guys, I want to talk about this for

a second, even though it's not about hypertrophy, it's defense chemicals, right? Like, don't eat spinach because of whatever or phytates or this or that. Guys, these compounds that are defense chemicals that are supposedly killing you are actually extremely beneficial for your health, right? So, people talk about how they cause inflammation and inflammation is bad for disease. Everybody roots it, like links it to inflammation, right? And what people don't understand about inflammation is that there's a huge difference between acute and chronic inflammation. Okay. So chronic inflammation is long-term inflammation, right? And it's usually low grade. So it's a slight increase in these inflammatory molecules and inflammation does not mean bloating. So if you're thinking about being bloated long-term, I'm not talking about bloating.

Okay. Inflammation by definition is a response by your immune system and your immune cells secrete different molecules that are inflammatory molecules, right? So chronic inflammation is when you have a slight increase in these molecules and they are increased for a prolonged period of time, years, right? That contributes to disease development. Now, there is acute inflammation, which is usually a higher spike in these molecules, but it resolves itself usually within 24 hours or so. There's a really good argument as to why acute inflammation is actually beneficial for you, right? If I told you, Danny, or to any of the listeners, if I gave you something that is going to make you tired, put you in pain, it's going to cause inflammation. It's going to cause elevated blood pressure. It's going to elevate your blood pressure. Is that good or bad for you? Everybody would say it's bad. Exercise does every single one of those things, right? Acutely. It's

an acute stressor that your body can overcome, right? So the degree of, or the degree of the intensity of the stressor is really important. And anything that is an acute stressor actually makes you more resilient towards that stressor. It's so true. Yeah. Exercise is literally just stress to your body and your body adapts to that stress. The intensity is important because if you do too much, exercise can kill you exercise can literally kill you right you can die of physical exhaustion you get rhabdomyolysis yeah there's a lot of ways that going above and beyond the hormetic effect of something can be bad exactly hormetic effect is the next thing i was going to talk about right it's this concept of hormesis where like your

body adapts and actually becomes more resilient when exposed to a stressor that is to an intensity that elicits a response but it's not so much that it causes damage right and that's the exact same thing that happens when you eat these plant compounds these defense chemicals right at the doses that we're consuming them they actually make us more resilient improve our immune function improve our anti-inflammatory capacities, and is overall very, very healthy for you. So whenever it tells you like, and whenever anybody tells you like, this food is trying to kill you, like food does not kill you. Yeah. And then remember guys, all of these people were not going anywhere near fruit

three years ago. And now it's like, well, obviously the smart thing to do is eat fruit. And I'm calling my shot now. In one to two years, there's going to be a short list of grains and vegetables that are okay too. And the carnivore diet will slowly morph into an omnivorous diet. And then before you know it, it'll just be the paleo diet. And I'll be like, okay, so here we go. You're just doing paleo. Because it's so wildly impractical

to imagine a life without fruits or vegetables and only eating meat. But those messages will travel faster and more rapidly than something less sensational. Like, hey, just eat a balance of all this stuff. So it's even though we're talking about- How do we make this stuff more sensational, bro? How do we make this more sensational? You know, it's an interesting point. It's something that I've been thinking about a lot,

and I think it comes through simplicity. I really think it comes through simplicity. I was listening to Morgan Housel's podcast. Morgan Housel, he wrote the book, The Psychology of Money. He wrote for The Motley Fool, which is a pretty popular economic website. And he was saying that essentially all investment strategies work pretty well. The only difference is that people have different timelines. And so whether it's real estate, whether it's investing in stocks, whether it's saving, short of some of the more sensationalized and idiotic approaches, as long as you're doing something that's going to work on your timeline, you're going to be pretty fine. And nutrition and training are kind of the same. It just sucks. And it's like a lot of what gets the most attention

is stuff that's promising to work on the shortest timeline. And so that draws in people who want it fast. But if we can just hammer the shit out of the basics and make it so simple and just repeat it forever, I think there's hope. But I don't know. The first person who figures out how to sensationalize, eat a balanced plate and lift five days a week, it's going to take 10 years, but you're going to be jacked and not die as soon. There's a lot of money for that, motherfucker. Yeah. Well, you know what I think the issue is, it's information that people already know. And that's the worst part.

They don't want to be told they already have the answer. Yeah. So when they see something that's new, that's really sensational. So any new ridiculous claim. It's funny that you use the analogy of investing. Do you know a good amount or some information on the stock market and investing in stocks and stuff like that? I would say I do.

I've been investing since I was 18. I come from broke parents and I'm determined to not repeat that mistake. So I'm a little bit of a financial nerd. Yeah. Okay. So I'm not, but I know the basics. Okay. So when I started investing my money,

I get really sucked into things and I just start learning a bunch of stuff right and so i learned the basics like hey for long term just invest in sp500 put a certain amount of money away every month and i was like all right this is pretty basic and simple that's like the basics of nutrition right and then i started following like more people and then i started getting content on like day traders and stuff like that they're like they're like analyzing the freaking candles and stuff like i don't even know what that stuff like that they're like they're like analyzing the freaking candles and stuff like i don't even know what that stuff is but they're like yeah you see this when you see this

pattern like buy it and i'm like oh shit should i be focusing on this stuff and i'm like it's getting into the weeds of it for no reason you know and then you start realizing there's different candle patterns whether you're looking at like hourly uh changes or like a minute by minute changes you know it's just it's the same type of stuff, man. People get into it. Yeah. Well, it's because there's a common psychological thoroughfare between the two. It's just this idea that it can't be that simple. And it's like, dude, literally all of the fucking richest people on earth are telling you to buy the S and P 500. And every jacked person on earth who has at least some semblance of training and nutrition

is telling you to eat a good amount of both plant and animal products, whatever's practical for you to get a balanced diet and to do some kind of exercise. And people just... They're like, yeah, but that's not going to happen fast enough. It's not on the timeframe I want. So instead, what I'm going to do is I'm going to buy Jizz coin and it's going to the moon and I'm going to repeat these same get rich quick schemes until I'm perpetually broke. And it's like get rich quick and get fit quick are the same thing. You'll just end up looking for the next scheme. Meanwhile, the people who are patient will slowly get jacked and slowly get rich and you'll be frustrated. Yeah. It's very similar to gambling too, right? Oh my gosh. Absolutely.

Maybe the next round, like it's, it's like maybe the next diet, maybe the next program, maybe that. And guys, if you listen to this and you're still thinking like, oh, well maybe this next thing, listen, this is the harsh truth. Nothing works except what I'm talking about. Like, except what we're talking about. Nothing else works. Like nothing else works except what i'm talking about like except what we're talking about nothing else works like nothing else works except what we're talking about unless you're like maybe taking some performance enhancing drugs and even then you still have to do what we're talking about it's like what you think works is just this repackaged as something different like i i see that a lot like oh my gosh you should definitely try carb backloading i remember when that was a big thing thing. It's like, okay, so eating enough carbs is going to work great. You just got to eat them at night. It's like, it's just eating more carbs later, but it's still eating the right

amount. It's like, you can spin it however you want. There is there. Okay. There are some things that are new and emerging though, that could be beneficial. And you're somebody who'd be a great person to talk to about this because you're scientifically literate. And this would be a great way to circle the wagons as we close out. But are there any things in the literature or that you're seeing in the research right now? We mentioned stretch as an influence for hypertrophy. That's really big. But are there things that you find encouraging or exciting or potentially emerging around the science of muscle growth and body composition that you think are cool? Sure, man. So I guess from the hypertrophy stuff,

there really is like more and more evidence, uh, like showing the importance of long muscle lengths. Right. And that's when we were talking about like range of motion, the reason why range of motion is important is because it exposes you to long muscle lengths. But if we want to talk about short range of motion, you can do short range of motion in the shortened position or in the lengthened position. And there's actually cool literature looking now at doing partial ranges of motion, particularly in the lengthened position and showing a really good hypertrophic outcomes. Right. So that would be like, let's say you're doing a dumbbell chest press. For those of you guys that are just listening, that would be doing the dumbbell chest press, like from your chest only halfway up. Right. Most people do the opposite. Most people go

from all the way up to like halfway down and then back up. So it's doing the hardest portion of the movement. Right. And I don't necessarily know from a practical standpoint, why would you purposefully choose to limit the range of motion if you're exposing yourself to lengthened portion? But let's say, I don't know, like people feel pain in particular ranges of motion, but you can do that lengthened position from a hypertrophy perspective. That's what really, really matters, right? And then if we're going to talk about other techniques, like blood flow restriction is really helpful, right? So blood flow restriction is really helpful. Yep. Right. So blood flow restriction. I like that a little bit. Unfortunately, you can only really do it really well for your arms and your legs because you have to tighten something around your extremity to limit the amount of blood that's flowing into the extremity.

Yeah. It only really works for joints that like flex and extend. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. But essentially you could get a great workout for your arms or for your legs with like a quarter of the weight, right? And one of the theories as to why they think it might be, and actually the hypertrophic stimulus is like pretty much the same, even if you're using like way more weight without it.

And it's like when you're limiting blood flow, you're limiting oxygen delivery and you're limiting nutrient delivery to the muscle. There's perhaps a larger buildup of metabolites as well. So when you're doing an exercise, when you feel like a crazy burning sensation, that's usually a buildup of metabolites, a drop in pH, a buildup of lactate, right? So when your blood is flowing, it's actually helping clear those things from your muscle actively. And when you're limiting blood flow, perhaps those metabolites build up more rapidly because you're not clearing them up because there's not much blood flowing. And that buildup of metabolite is one of the proposed mechanisms by which we can stimulate muscle growth. Yeah. Right. It's the one to me, that's the most interesting. Like I understand you have mechanical tension and muscle damage,

but for people who are, you know, either limited in how they can train, or they're looking for a way to build muscle that doesn't require a ton of load. The ability to introduce like mechanic or a metabolic stress is, is interesting. I think about that a lot. Cause I have a sauna and I'm huge on like going in the sauna. And so much of the benefit that we get from the sauna is the metabolic output and the unique metabolic changes that they quite literally change your vascular health. Like you get a metabolic and it's like, there's, there's so many cool things that we can do without calling ourselves biohackers. Like you're kind of hacking your biology with

some BFR in a way. Yeah. Yeah, dude. Well, well, like sauna is very similar type of stimulus as a cardiovascular exercise, right? Because your, your skin temperature rises so much that your vascular system has to adapt to cool your skin off, right? Yep. So you get better vasodilation, better blood flow, and you get very similar adaptations as doing cardio based exercise. Great for the cardio haters out there, by the way. Dude, I'm a hardcore cardio hater.

Don't buy a $3,000 treadmill when you can buy a $6,000 sauna. Dude, I just walk. And it's not because I don't, it's not that I hate cardio. I just like get in my mind. It's hard, dude. You're six foot five. It's like, you're never going to be a great runner. I doubt it. I'm, I'm, I think I'm definitely a little bit OCD and I just like start like counting my steps and stuff like that. It blows my mind, dude. I used to swim competitively back in middle school and high school. And if I had to swim like a thousand yards, for example, each lap is 25 yards. And the whole time in my head, I'm swimming, I'm thinking 25, 25, 25.

And then I would come back 50, 50, 50, 50. It just drives me nuts. So I can't do long distance stuff, bro. I'm actually a fast runner. I can do sprints and stuff like that. I used to love playing basketball, but I cannot do long endurance cardio. If there was a perfect world, I would get like a hundred percent of my cardio in from walking a dog, playing flag football and playing like pickup basketball or spike ball. I think that's something a lot of people lose touch with on their fitness journey is just the importance of playing and disorganized movement. So many injuries. I don't think there's

truly such a thing as injury prevention, but so many injuries and so much of the loss of mobility, I think that we see across the lifespan can be attributed to just not enough disorganized movement. So play with your kids, get barefoot, make up silly games, go play some, go shoot some hoops, go throw the football around, like get your cardio in any way you can. You don't have to walk or run or sprint or whatever. You can find a way to make it fun. Yeah, dude. And you know, this brings up another interesting topic since you were talking about like other variables that could potentially benefit hypertrophy and again we're getting into like niche things here right where it's totally i mean that's what people want they we've walked them through a nice continuum we're in our upper

graduate course work yeah yeah yeah but um cardio can be potentially beneficial for potentiating gains right and you might be thinking like how is that like i've heard cardio kills your gains it's like you don't want to do a ton of cardio right before you lift because it's just fatiguing. It's tiring. So you don't have as much energy for lifting. It's that simple, right? It's not that cardio has some magical benefits where it kills your gains. But if you do, if you improve your cardiovascular function, you could potentially improve your ability to build muscle because you improve your work capacity. One of the biggest issues, like we talk about rest periods and stuff like that, you want to rest sufficiently to be able to push hard on every set. But if you're doing a set of like six reps on a squat and you're out of breath for like six or seven minutes,

like, man, that's not good, right? To get enough work in for that workout, you might be at the gym for two, two and a half hours. Whereas if you're in better cardiovascular fitness, each set that you do might still be equally locally fatiguing on the muscle, but it's not going to be as cardiovascular fatiguing. You might feel fresher through your workout. You might be able to push the intensity a little bit harder. You're not going to be breathing as heavy. You're going to recover quicker between sets, all of which will improve the quality of your workout, which will improve your ability to build muscle long-term. So I think having a good baseline of like cardiovascular fitness is really important.

And for that, you don't have to be doing crazy amounts of cardio either. No, you don't. I mean, the thing that really made it click for me with regards to, you know, the benefit of cardio for resistance output is like when you train your cardiovascular fitness, you're to a certain degree training the mitochondria in your cell to essentially better produce energy via this aerobic pathway. And that becomes increasingly more challenging, the harder your cardio gets. And the more it turns from like a walk into a sprint, the harder it is for these mitochondria to contribute a lot of ATP. You start using things like stored sugar, you start, but that's not the point. The point is when you do cardio, yes, you train your vessels.

Yes. You train your heart, but you also train these little tiny things in your cell to get better at pumping out the currency that you need for training. So you'll recover better set to set. You'll have better output. You'll probably be more vascular, which anybody who wants to be jacked is probably down for. And more importantly than anything, guys, you don't want to gain all this muscle only to be out of breath when you jog up the stairs. It's like cardiovascular. The majority of the people listening are probably male. And the majority of the males in your life will die from a cardiovascular event.

And that's not going to change. More men die from a cardiovascular event than anything else. So like just do the cardio, even if it's like the basic, like 90 minutes a week of walking, like you, you will be so much healthier and happier for it. Anything else you'd like to add here before we close out, my friend? No, man, that's pretty pretty much everything i think we've covered a ton of really interesting topics and maybe i think maybe we could touch maybe for a couple minutes on supplementation i think you're right yeah it's hard to get it's hard to uh get fully engrossed in wanting to get jacked without getting bombarded with thousands of supplement ads and yeah and different marketing gimmicks so what are the let's say the what are what are the big three

for muscle growth and i'm not even going to include protein because I think it's food. Yeah. And, and like there's, if, if you're getting adequate protein, there's nothing additional that you get from protein powder, right? Like protein powder just helps you meet your protein needs. But let's say you're getting your protein needs in other things that are beneficial. And you guys have probably heard this a million times. Creatine number one, by far creatine number one number one by far not just even for building muscle just for like even

general health dude talking about new emerging areas of research like there's really good uh emerging evidence showing benefits of of creatine for cardiovascular health helping with uh brain health in particular yeah brain health. Blood sugar regulation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's wild. It is. It is.

It is kind of wild. Like I usually tell people like when something sounds too good, it's probably too good. But like creatine sounds too good. But for real though, like it does have all these benefits. Like you should definitely be taking creatine five grams a day. Maybe larger people. I would argue that there's a potential reason to have a little bit more. I actually have about seven to eight grams per day because I weigh about 220 pounds.

Not natty. Not natty anymore, guys. Super not natty. Once you cross that five gram threshold, it's not natty. You can take up to a thousand mg of test a week, but if you take six grams of creatine, you're not natty anymore. Yeah. And the thousand mg of tests is just TRT, right? Yeah. That's something for another time. Yeah. Yeah, dude. And maybe we could do another future episode just talking about supplementation. I love this stuff. Yeah. You're more than welcome back anytime.

Thanks, man. Well, aside from creatine, if we're going to talk about a pre-workout, right? Let's just talk about like, because we'll talk about pre-workout as one supplement. Yeah. But what should you look for in your pre-workout, right? Let's just talk about like, cause we'll talk about pre-workout as one supplement. Yeah. What should you look for in your pre-workout? I love that caffeine, right? Like definitely caffeine. If you want a caffeine free pre-workout, sure. But like caffeine is like half the benefit. Yeah. That's what's giving you that ability to fight through the fatigue and to get a couple extra reps. And even if you feel like you're somebody who has like a high tolerance to caffeine or whatever, it's not even just like, I guess it is the way it makes you feel, but it's not just like

how you feel super energized in the morning. If you have coffee on like an empty stomach, right? Cause you and I can probably agree to this. Like if you've had breakfast and lunch, and like, you've been about your day, if you have some caffeine, it doesn't have a crazy effect on your energy levels, but it does, it does, does uh decrease perceived exertion so it makes things feel a little bit easier which can arguably help you push a little bit harder right but you definitely want caffeine um probably two to hundred two to three hundred milligrams a serving is good bigger person maybe three to four hundred milligrams right uh i think the recommended dose is like... It's something absurd per kilogram. Four to six milligrams per kilo... No, no, no. It comes out to me being 100 kilograms being 600

milligrams caffeine, which is crazy high. Yes. I've done the math myself and been like, it's 46 milligrams per kilogram of body weight, but that is really high, right? Like the upper end of that is really high. Now you got to think about like these studies are trying to like, just see optimization and performance, right? And like these higher doses of caffeine do have improvements in performance, right? But also these studies are not really long-term. So like, do you have an adaptation to it? Is it perhaps like not a good idea long term who knows you'll find out really quickly how much caffeine you can tolerate yeah and two to three hundred milligrams i think is a pretty effective dose for most people just like yeah if you're gonna have it at night maybe go for a caffeine free pre-workout like ideally you're not having this five or six hours

before going to sleep yeah definitely not and then if we're going to talk about additional things to look in there look for in, definitely citrulline malate. Like that? So, people talk about nitric oxide a lot, right? And there are nitric oxide supplements. There sure are. L-citrulline is a precursor to nitric oxide. Actually, L-citrulline is converted to L-arginine and then L-arginine is converted to nitric oxide.

You'll see supplements with L-arginine in it. Don't buy that because the absorption of L-arginine and then L-arginine is converted to nitric oxide. You'll see supplements with L-arginine in it. Don't buy that because the absorption of L-arginine is minimal. So even though you're getting it, you're actually not absorbing as much of it in your GI. If you consume L-citrulline, it has a much higher absorption rate and it's almost all converted to L-arginine and then all of that is converted to nitric oxide. What that does is help your blood vessels dilate. So you have more blood flow. It improves oxygen delivery, nutrient delivery, and it improves exercise performance. And you ideally want to be getting at least six to eight grams of citrulline malate in a serving of free workout. And then you want to also look for beta alanine.

Now, beta alanine is a little bit context specific because it really benefits exercise of high intensity, like lifting, that is in the duration of about 30 to 60 seconds. So if you're training or maybe even like two or three minutes of high intensity output, right? So if you're training like a body builder with high volume, perhaps using supersets and stuff like that, high volume sets, high rep sets, beta alanine is going to be helpful. If you're training for maximal strength and doing three reps on a deadlift, like beta alanine is not going to help much because beta alanine, what it does is help buffer your blood pH. So we were talking about earlier about metabolite buildup and lowering pH. So you have a buildup of hydrogen in your muscle, which is a lowering of your pH. So it becomes the environment

becomes more acidic. Okay. And so that lowering of the pH is So the environment becomes more acidic. And so that lowering of the pH is one of the mechanisms by which you hit momentary muscular failure. So you're not able to get another rep. There's a bunch of variables that contribute to that. pH is one of those. And beta-alanine essentially helps buffer your blood pH by being converted to something called carnosine. You don't need to know the specifics, but it helps with that in particular. So exercises that induce a lowering in pH would benefit from supplementing with beta alanine. And those are going to be high intensity exercises, probably like that 30 to 45 second range to up to like two minutes, right? So again, if you're doing 15 rep sets, maybe if you're training with a slow eccentric pauses supersets all of that stuff high intensity

training will benefit from beta alanine i'm not saying that strength specific training is not high intensity because it is but it's a very different uh type of training right that type of training would probably benefit a lot more from stimulants like caffeine 100 percent like these more exactly yeah yeah yeah right. Like people do that stuff before. Dude, have you ever sniffed smelling salts? Well, I had a high school coach when I first started lifting weights, who would make everybody get into the squat rack. And then he would go into the like boiler room of the gym and crack out the pool, pool cleaning ammonia, pop the lid off and hold the bucket and stick it in your face. And then your

set began. He'd go to the next rack, stick it in your face. And then your set began. I don't know how many brain cells I have left at this point, but that was like, I'm not in jail, bro. I don't know. Like the amount of cardiovascular exercise he made us do. Like, and I grew up in a very, very hot part of California where it'd be like, I don't think we're allowed to practice today. It's like illegal. And he just, he would just slap the temperature gauge until it went all the way down to zero. Like, Oh, it looks like we're running today. Like dude, that's wild, man. High school strength and conditioning coaches. If they don't kill you, they will turn you into a absolute mental savage, but they will probably kill you. And they are the worst. Dude, I wrestled in high school and that shit was horrible, man.

That's horrifying. High school sports exist to teach you how to deal with shitty bosses in the future. Dude, I wrestled and there was a really good kid in the 181 pound weight class, which is where I should have wrestled naturally. But if I wanted to wrestle, I had to get down to 160, which is a big cut. And so the coach was like, literally three days before me, he's like, just don't eat. Oh, dog. I would go home and tell my mom, I can't have dinner. And she's like, you're crazy. What do you mean? I'm his family. Yeah. She's like, no, you're eating. And so that would cause issues at home. And then going to the meat, keep in mind, I grew up in Miami. It's like really hot, right? So we would go in a school bus, windows down. So no AC, you're sweating your ass off. You would put on a garbage bag. So you would sweat more. And then you would chew gum and spit out your saliva and not drink any water to dehydrate yourself. Absolutely horrible, man. It's so dangerous it's crazy people kids kids die every year from wrestling weight

weight tactics okay what a beautiful note to wrap to wrap it up on no but honestly man that was very insightful very thoughtful a lot a lot like your content i want everybody who's listening to follow you because i learn a lot from you so where can they do it? Yeah. So I post content on Instagram and YouTube pretty much daily. You guys can find me at Dr. Joey Munoz. That's D-R dot J-O-E-Y-M as in mother, U-N-O-Z. You'll probably link it down in the description. Sure will. And then I coach as well.

So if you guys perhaps want to work with me or interested in working with me, you can shoot me an email at josephatbiolain.com. That's B-I-O-L-A-Y-N-E. And that type, that information's on my Instagram handle as well. And then my podcast, which I just recently started about two months ago, which is where I'm doing long form content like this and interviewing people as well is the Dr. Joey Munoz show. And that's on every like major podcasting app. That's, that's me. And that's what I do, man. Thank you so much for having me on, bro. It's been, uh, awesome connecting with you and actually getting to, to talk with you with more than like a three word messages on Instagram. Absolutely, man. I'm going to have you on in the future. I want to expand on this and, uh, I'm so, so happy that you gave me your time today.

I'm very grateful. Thanks a bunch. Thank you.