Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 300: 1x/week training, lean protein sources, recomping, consistency + MORE!

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey, everybody, welcome in to another episode of the dynamic dialogue podcast, your favorite health, fitness, productivity and performance podcast. In this episode, we will be talking about a variety of different things from food, to cognition, to nutrition, to time management, mental toughness, as well as even my engagement. We'll be discussing how to optimize body composition with an injury, lean sources of protein, deficits of varying intensity, how to cultivate mental toughness where it was exactly where I proposed to my fiance, how to manage joint and muscle pain when you begin to start training, as well as the optimal one time a week training program. I hope you enjoy. This episode is brought to you in part thanks to some of our amazing partners

Starting point is 00:00:56 like LMNT. LMNT makes the best electrolyte product on the market. In fact, I've actually started drinking my Alimenti each and every morning before I have coffee so as to optimize my circadian biology, make sure that I'm hydrated, and make sure that I'm getting ahead on my water intake throughout the day and not reliant on stimulants, but instead being somebody who's reliant on hydration and the proper balance of minerals and electrolytes. If you want to feel your best all day, mentally and physically, it's imperative that you stay hydrated. LMNT provides a balanced ratio of sodium, potassium, and magnesium to support brain and body hydration. This combination

Starting point is 00:01:39 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. Elementia 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

Starting point is 00:02:29 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. Welcome in, folks. A little bit of housekeeping before we get going here on the episode. Lots of cool things going on in my world. The studio, the fitness studio and personal training studio I opened, uh, opened in Sonoma County that also might I add has a fabulous physical therapy and rehabilitation component, uh, has officially turned one year old, actually at the very beginning of June.

Starting point is 00:03:17 Uh, super cool. Awesome to see looking through my, um, feed kind of your, you you know how they do it. The, what would you guys call that? The kind of like pre-served up to you, little Apple, kind of fun, kind of cool, curated little like photo roll. I got that and I just saw all the equipment coming in, the floor going in. And it reminded me of when I very first started, like when I very first started personal training, I remember being at

Starting point is 00:03:54 24 hour fitness and thinking it was like so, so cool that I worked at the newest, cleanest gym in town. And I was so happy about it. And I remember telling every single client, you know, one day I want to open up a gym and work with all my really good friends, you know, physical therapy, strength and conditioning. I have friends who are physical, who are personal trainers. I of course have a very close friend who's a physical therapist. And just the idea of like getting all of this to potentially happen under one roof was always a goal. The fact that it has now consistently been in operation for a year, we had a very profitable first year, which is rare. It's just, it's so cool. And I wanted to share that with you guys, not to brag, but just, you know, that was a goal when I got hired as a personal trainer at 24 Hour Fitness, it was around this time in 2012.

Starting point is 00:04:47 I had just moved down to Sonoma County to go to college. So, a little over 11 years. And now, that seems so possible, but then it seemed completely impossible. And I think a lot about what I would do if I were in a position where I had to start all the way over from scratch with the knowledge that I would ultimately end up in the same place. And it would suck, guys. It really would, because that was a grind. That was a decade of hard work and really climbing up from the bottom. And this was at the beginning of social media. So Instagram didn't even exist really. At this moment, I should say Instagram hardly really existed. It just wasn't a thing the way it is now. And that has been a huge part of my growth,

Starting point is 00:05:42 of course. But I found it absolutely cool that that has happened. Speaking on the note of politics. Yes, it does seem like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis will be running for president. That was a big news that was announced on Twitter spaces. I try not to talk too much about politics. But, you know, I just can't help but think, you know, we're in an increasingly politicized world. He'll have to beat former President Donald Trump in the primary, which seems unlikely just based on how much of a stranglehold Donald Trump has on, you know,

Starting point is 00:06:19 what's left of the Republican Party. It is more a party of Trump. Biden, Joseph Biden, current president of the United States, seems to be the incumbent, albeit it does appear that Gavin Newsom is making the rounds politically speaking, a lot of national attention. It does appear like 2024, for all intents and purposes, will be a repeat of the 2020 election cycle. And I bring this whole thing up because I think about you guys' mental health. And I know that many of you get frustrated with politics and you kind of unplug. And a lot of people look at Biden versus Trump in 2024 as picking between two terrible options. These are both men who are well into their 80s. It was a very destructive and really tenuous election just

Starting point is 00:07:07 three years ago. So we're gearing up now, the back half of 2023 and into 2024. It's primary season, folks. And politics is only going to increase. The temperature is only going to increase. So I just want to remind you to insulate yourself as much as you can. Try not to watch cable news. Try to stay away from the hyper-partisan hackery on social media. When you unplug from politics without unplugging from civics, you will see an increase in your mental health, your productivity, the positivity in your life. This has been a huge train on me. Not something I love. In positive sports news, the Denver Nuggets won their first NBA championship.

Starting point is 00:07:48 Very, very cool. Fun fact about the Nuggets, grew up a huge fan of Allen Iverson, really short guard, efficient scorer, played most of his career for Philadelphia, did end up in Denver where I followed him for quite some time. They could never get past the Lakers. Him and a Carmelo Anthony-led Nuggets team couldn't do it. But Nikola Jokic, the Serbian superstar leading the Nuggets to their first world championship, and he said something cool. He said, basketball is something I'm good at. Now, mind you, this is the best player in the NBA now. Basketball is something I'm good at, but it is not my whole life. And I just thought that was amazing coming from

Starting point is 00:08:25 arguably the NBA's best player. And just wrapping up, speaking of best players, Japanese baseball sensation Shohei Otani is leading all of baseball in home runs and leading the American League in strikeouts. And for those of you who are fitness fanatics, this would be like winning the CrossFit Games while simultaneously winning a bodybuilding show. Pitching and hitting are so wildly different. The fact that a 20-year-old non-American born essentially import can come to the United States, absolutely dominate as a hitter and lead the American League in strikeouts as a starting pitcher is an athletic marvel. Very, very cool. If you're not into baseball, you should at least be keeping up with Shohei Otani.

Starting point is 00:09:11 If you're into athletics, if you're into excellence, very fascinating and very, very cool to see. Absolutely a like huge and colossal, colossal fan of his right now. I am collecting a number of rookie cards, which just seem to be skyrocketing in value, so not selling any of them. But wow, sports has just never been better as we enter into the period between the end of basketball and the beginning of football. Okay, folks. So I'm going to get into your questions here. The first of which comes from, let's see, these are all by the way, from over on Instagram. So that's the one thing you got to remember. If you would like me to read your question live on the show, to see your question answered live on the show, the best way for you to do that bar none is to follow me over on Instagram.

Starting point is 00:10:06 You'll have the greatest opportunity to interact with me. So this question, love this one. It comes from miles Hawes, hard to get regular lifts in at the moment, best full body workout for one time per week. So I would do antagonist paired sets, peripheral heart action system paired sets. I know what you're thinking. What the hell is that supposed to mean? Peripheral heart action system means training the lower body and then immediately transitioning into training the upper body. So for example, an antagonist paired set would be a chest press into a row. Fabulous, fabulous, fabulous move, moving the blood from the front of the thorax to the back. But that's not what I'm after personally. What I would prefer if we could only work out one time per week is to

Starting point is 00:10:58 take advantage of something known as a peripheral heart action system, which would be to train the upper body with something like a would be to train the upper body with something like a shoulder press immediately into the lower body with a squat. So I might train a hinge, like a Romanian deadlift, where you're bending over into the hip flexed hinged position with something like a bench press where you're lying flat in a more prone position. Great combination there. I would train something like a chin up or a pull up vertical pull with something like a squat. I find those two go very comfortably together. And then if you have time, you can sprinkle in accessory work, albeit probably not a ton of it, but some of of it the key here is you need to train a push a pull

Starting point is 00:11:48 a squat a lunge a hinge and most likely your abs but the big ones are a push a pull a squat a lunge and a hinge you could probably just rotate something like a bilateral squat stance something like let's say a barbell squat with something like a unilateral squat stance and just swap every week or every other week, your split squats for your barbell squats. I mean, the truth is folks, the real key is you got to train the quads, the glutes, the hams, the chest, the back. And when you do that, you'll probably get some shoulders and some biceps and triceps, some calves. So start with your big compounds, train them heavy. I do upper, lower superset or contrast or straight sets, depending on your time, focus on something that

Starting point is 00:12:30 is progressive that you can easily go ahead and make progress with each week, each week, and I would recommend four to five sets per exercise as you're going to have a very difficult time getting the inadequate amount of volume. Okay, this question comes from Sybil Hackfield. And the question is, is filet mignon a lean protein source to eat often? So yes, as far as cuts of beef go, uh, filet mignon is one of the actually leaner ones. So many of you are probably like, yo, what the hell? Lean protein source from filet mignon. Like what? That's crazy. And I hear what you're saying. Like for a lot of you, you're not going to be using filet mignon as your lean protein source. I mean,

Starting point is 00:13:19 it is one of the more expensive cuts. The leanest cuts of beef are usually found around the round. So you've got picanha, which is the rump cap. That's very popular in Brazilian cooking as one of the more fatty pieces of the round or the rump cap. A lot of people will call that the top sirloin's cap, but sirloin is lean and round is lean. When you get to the shank where you have the brisket, that's getting a little fattier. Chuck, which is a different part of the cow entirely, also tends to be quite lean. That is often stew meat. The flank is not a particularly lean area, although flank steak tends to be lean-ish. This is also where you get the skirt steak, which is quite fatty, very beautifully marbled. What's going on guys, taking a break from

Starting point is 00:14:06 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 plan 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 the reps to do, exercise tutorials filmed by me with me and my team. So you'll get my

Starting point is 00:14:51 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. Now, the short loin, that's where you get your porterhouses. That's where you get your T-bones.

Starting point is 00:15:37 That's where you get your filet mignon. The T-bone and the New York strip and the ribeye, the ribs and the ribeye and the rib cap all come from the rib area. That's probably the fattiest area. But of those cuts, the kind of primary main high quality beef cuts, let's say ribeye, porterhouse, T-bone, filet, and New York, the filet is the leanest, but it's definitely not a practical or affordable protein source for most people. If we're being completely honest, the filet mignon on a price per pound spectrum is just not going to be in the budget for so many of you guys. It's simply too damn expensive. So you're better off with things like eggs, chicken breast, cottage cheese, pork tenderloin, lean cuts of sirloin, quinoa. These are low-fat protein sources. Quinoa has

Starting point is 00:16:33 carbs. I'd say salmon, but I'd swap it for tilapia just because it's lower in calories. If you want lean protein sources and can afford filet, more power to you. Not a option that I think most people are going to do well with. Okay. From Arcana Vermad, the question is, I saw you got engaged. Would love to know how you proposed. Congrats. So it was really important to me to propose to my fiance somewhere significant, somewhere meaningful, and somewhere that I think is quite frankly, really beautiful and cool. Somewhere that we could form some new memories, somewhere that we could be at one with the beauty of the natural world. So I took her to the big island of Hawaii. It was her first trip to Hawaii. I'm a, you know,

Starting point is 00:17:23 Kama'aina. I've been going since I was a little kid. My dad used to take me all the time. So I'm very, very much connected to the Hawaiian islands and the culture of the Hawaiian islands, despite not being Hawaiian or having any native Hawaiian in my lineage. And so the big island is, is a favorite of mine. I spent the most time on the big island and Molokai, probably the least time on Kauai and Maui where I'd like to, I spent a lot of time on Maui. I want to go back to Maui, but that's not the point. The point is I had been planning to propose to her on the beach. I was going to do it at the Four Seasons Hualalai, which is where like all the rich

Starting point is 00:18:01 venture capitalists and Steve Jobs and just so much of Silicon Valley tech go to stay in Hawaii. You can't even walk out of the lobby there without seeing big name people are being like, holy shit, look who that is. But it seemed a little performative. There's some unbelievable stretches of beaches on the property, but I just couldn't get away from people. And I wanted something that felt a little less commercialized kind of off the resort area while I was planning it that night we were walking down the beach and the beach was really steep and I wanted to do it on like February 22nd or 23rd because I liked the numbers 222 or 223 and it was just a really, um, it was very, very difficult to do. Um, because I was trying to find

Starting point is 00:18:48 my footing, trying to find my timing, holding this ring in my fanny pack. And it was a pain in the butt. And so I just said, you know what? I'm going to call an audible here. We're going to go to the entire opposite side of the Island. And I'm going to do this tomorrow. So the next day I woke my fiance up at six o'clock in the morning, my then girlfriend, uh, we drove about two hours from the volcanic dry side of the island, the Kailua Kona coast, all the way around to the wet side of the island, uh, over by Hilo where Akaka falls is. And we drove up to the tallest waterfall in the United States. I believe you can see the Niagara Falls in Canada from New York City, but they're in Canada or something that allows Akaka Falls to gently imply that it is the tallest waterfall in the United States.

Starting point is 00:19:41 Absolutely stunning, absolutely gorgeous in the rainforest, flowers in full bloom, absolutely surging, absolutely looking completely gorgeous, like nothing you've ever seen. If you've yet to go to the Hawaiian rainforest, there is simply nothing that I can do to come anywhere near close to describing what that scene is like. But imagine her and I walking over a kind of, let's call it a staircase. There is a metal staircase that leads you through the jungle and like a walkway. And we walk up to the apex of the stairs. And at the apex of the stairs, after about a quarter mile walk, you can see the waterfall. And she was completely taken away and blown away and walked down the stairs onto this kind of flat right in front and nobody was there. And I said, this is my chance. So I

Starting point is 00:20:38 dropped to a knee, pulled out the ring, asked the woman to marry me in front of this beautiful surging waterfall all alone in the jungle on an Island in the middle of the ocean. And it worked pretty good. It was a undeniably beautiful scene. Okay. This question is from or dot underscore, uh, diff a while since I still have five to 10 pounds to lose, but want to drop three to four more percent body fat better to be in a maintenance or deficit. So unequivocally deficit, you're not losing body weight by definition when you're at maintenance. I know it can be confusing because a lot of people say, hey, go to maintenance and you'll see recomp, which is generally true for new lifters. You can see some very positive

Starting point is 00:21:20 compositional change eating at maintenance calories with a high protein intake. But you made the implication here that you've already attempted to lose weight and have lost some weight. So going back to maintenance isn't going to drive the same level of compositional change as going over to a small deficit or increasing your deficit. And I think that that can be a little bit challenging to really grasp because of all the talks around deficit, around maintenance, around surplus. The function of going from a deficit to maintenance is to stop weight gain, from maintenance to surplus is to increase weight gain. But what you need to understand is if you are in a deficit and you increase your calories to go up to maintenance, you should expect some weight gain in the form of water retention, glycogen being held. So as far as I see it, maintenance has its place. Not if your goal is

Starting point is 00:22:26 fat loss in the current moment from Emma T fitness. The question is, is it best to be in a deficit for body composition? I have sciatica, so I can't lift heavy. So if you want to optimize your body composition, you'll probably want to reach a body fat that you're comfortable at and that you feel like your physique looks good at. Easier said than done, of course. But, you know, you need to put yourself in a position to challenge your body physically, to maximize your body composition, which is hard to do in a deficit. So if you are only ever in a deficit, always training in a deficit, doing whatever it is that you possibly can to, you know, kind of, I don't know, for lack of a better term, if you're doing everything you can to train hard,

Starting point is 00:23:15 you know, get a pump, push your muscles, you'll have better body composition than if you simply starve yourself. So I think the best thing to do would be to get relatively lean, lean enough, you know, not so lean that you kind of just hate the way you look, but lean enough that let's just call a spade a spade, lean enough that you like what you're looking at. And you're not going to get there with any appreciable muscle if you're only in a deficit. So I might recommend after you reach a level of leanness, add a little bit of calories in, go back to maintenance, train hard. So many of my natural clients who aren't competing look better a week or two after cutting just because they have a chance to rehydrate. So I would say the best thing for our body composition, get lean, then try to

Starting point is 00:23:58 limit maintenance, hover there, especially if you have something like sciatica and you really can't train super hard. That puts you in a unique space, but you can always train around an injury. There's plenty of stuff you can do for upper body and I'm sure you can make modifications. Okay. This question comes from IRT Walker. And the question is, why am I so mentally weak? LOL, but really. So mental toughness is interesting. I find that it's something that we talk about a lot as a culture, as a society. We are kind of constantly, for lack of a better term, trying to explain the world around us and the decisions we make in the world around us as being, you know, integral for why, you know, like I don't have mental toughness, so I don't look very good. And the

Starting point is 00:24:55 reason that I don't look very good is because, you know, I'm lacking the toughness to stay with a fitness plan. And that's pretty common. And so this is something I actually see a lot, which is individuals communicating, I want to get in shape, but I'm not motivated enough to do so. And I've shown myself that I am mentally weak and incapable of sticking with things. And I've seen it in multiple areas of my life, not just getting in shape. So I know for a fact that I'm going to have a hard time doing this. What's amazing to me about this is I had a very hard time with discipline, with structure, with routine. Growing up as a kid with ADHD, I was always told that's normal.

Starting point is 00:25:39 That's about what you should expect from somebody who's got a learning disability. expect from somebody who's got a learning disability. And immediately after finding, working out and the joy that I got from training and working out on a regular routine, guess who was able to cultivate more discipline? Guess who was able to cultivate the ability to stick to a routine and a plan? This kid, me. So what I would tell you to do, if you're telling me I'm so mentally weak and I don't have the ability to work out consistently, look at working out consistently, not just as an opportunity to get in shape, but to overcome that mental weakness and to begin to fortify a routine, to have some structure. It's very hard to build discipline and routine in the absence of structure.

Starting point is 00:26:22 And one of the best structures, protocols, and plans that I have ever seen that people will consistently stick to as a workout routine that helps them look and feel better. So if you go to the gym and feel good, and after a couple of weeks, you start to get stronger. And after a couple of months, you start to look better. You're going to want to stick with that. And that is going to bleed into other areas. So many people look at their fitness as being unachievable because up until this point, they haven't shown themselves any reason to believe that they could achieve a great physique. I'm not disciplined. I have poor mental toughness. I don't stick with things. Well, guess what exercise will help you cultivate?

Starting point is 00:27:00 Mental toughness, the ability to stick with things. It's the old, I can't get in shape until I get disciplined. It's like, you won't get disciplined until you get in shape. And that's not to say that's true for everybody, but it's true for a lot of people. I mean, the quick fix for building discipline, cultivating a routine and cultivating structure is pushing yourself to do something uncomfortable where the absence of routine and structure would lead to demise, a new job, a new semester, something crazy, something where you have to elevate. I think working out allows you to do that in a way that quite frankly, a lot of people really, really need. Okay. Last question comes from Samaj Bradshaw. And the question is any

Starting point is 00:27:44 suggestions for forearm and shin splints? They've pained me forever. So forearm pain, very common for new lifters. So is shin splints. Why you might ask, it actually has an interesting amount to do with the, believe it or not. And a lot of people think this is crazy. The size of the muscles that you're training. So think about your, let's use your tibialis, the muscle that people complain about with shin splints as an example, really tiny front of the shin muscle kind of works to essentially lift the front of the foot up or the toes up where the calf works to push the heels away from the ground. So those muscles are tiny, almost never trained. When people go running, they hit them insanely hard because they're constantly picking their toe up and they just like end up crushing, crushing,

Starting point is 00:28:35 crushing their foot or their, their tibialis. And so people go like, wait, what the heck? You know, like, why are my tibs so fried? And the same exact thing guys happens with your forearms. When you first start lifting, people are just like, I am completely fried. That is absolutely wrecked me. Um, you know, I can barely grip, just give it time, give those small muscles time. And if you're brand new and you train your forearms and you train your tibialis, this will happen a lot less. Okay, folks. So thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of the podcast. Very, very exciting. Very, very cool. Can't wait to share more with you as we go. Please be sure to leave the show a five-star rating and review on

Starting point is 00:29:17 iTunes, Apple podcast, Spotify, wherever you listen, share it to your story and tag me so I can say thank you.

Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 300: 1x/week training, lean protein sources, recomping, consistency + MORE!

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