Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 301: How to Get “JACKED”, Stubborn Weight Gain, Losing Gains on Vacation + MORE!

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey, everybody, welcome in to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. This is episode 301 of hopefully your favorite health, fitness, nutrition, and performance enhancing podcast. In today's episode, I will be discussing how to maximally build muscle under all circumstances as simply as possible. We'll be discussing if weight gain and fat accumulation in certain areas is tied to your ability to grow muscle in those areas. Meaning if you have an area where you more easily store fat, is it possible that you might also store more muscle there? We'll also take a peek at the different forms of creatine. Can you mix them? We'll discuss the link

Starting point is 00:00:50 between food decisions, specifically protein powder and eggs, and things like acne and what you might be able to do to better control your own skin, as well as how reasonably you should fear losing gains after two weeks off in the gym. All right, folks. So I hope you enjoy the episode today. I want to thank you for listening. There's so many podcasts to choose from. That's one of the reasons I like to keep these episodes condensed and short and that they're applicable. You can take them and go. So please enjoy the episode and be sure to share it on your Instagram story. Tag me, leave me a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. It all helps the show grow a ton. Enjoy.

Starting point is 00:01:31 This podcast has some awesome partners, and one of my favorite, of course, is Legion Athletics. Legion is my go-to supplement manufacturer for what I like to call my big rock supplements. This would be my protein powder, my pre-training formula, my post-training formula and creatine, and my kind of ancillary vitamins and micronutrient protection. So why do I like Legion so much? What sets them apart? It's quite simple. Legion uses all natural ingredients. All the formulas include natural coloring and natural sweeteners. No artificial sweeteners, just stevia. And every single formulation, be it a pre-workout or a

Starting point is 00:02:11 vitamin, contains clinically effective dosages of ingredients shown to work in humans in clinical research supported by robust trials. No filler, just legit ingredients in each and every formulation proven to work. The whey protein isolate is so light. It's fantastic. It mixes in water. It tastes amazing. And I drink it every day, even as somebody who's lactose intolerant.

Starting point is 00:02:35 That's just how high quality this whey protein is. And it's sourced from Irish dairy cows that are raised well, eat their natural diet and packaged in climate friendly packaging. I love their plant protein too. For those of you who like something that's a little on the thicker side and you aren't a fan of animal products. Also, I love Legion's pre-workout, but specifically the pre-workout that does not contain caffeine. That would be their Stim-Free Pulse. I'm a huge, huge fan of beta-alanine and L-citrulline, but I don't like taking in wildly high amounts of caffeine.

Starting point is 00:03:05 So if you are somebody who likes pre-workout with caffeine, you can try Pulse. Or if you like it without caffeine because you maybe want to enjoy your morning coffee or monitor your caffeine consumption, try the Pulse Stim Free. My favorite flavors there for sure are the New Grape and the amazing, amazing Tropical Punch. As for my creatine, I get that from Legion's Recharge, five grams each and every day. I take it on the days I train as well as the days I do not, because Recharge also contains L-carnitine, which can help with promoting muscle recovery and decreasing soreness, as well as some ingredients to help with creatine utilization. And of course, my favorite supplements for my ancillary micronutrient health are Legion's

Starting point is 00:03:45 multivitamin and Legion's greens powder. Not only do these two products contain a ton of high quality vitamins and minerals, they also contain unique adaptogens like KSM 66 ashwagandha and reishi mushroom, which I like to take each and every day to promote my health. If you want to cover all your bases with a high quality protein, creatine post-workout, or the ancillary micronutrient health stuff like greens, powders, and multivitamin, I encourage you to go over to legionathletics.com and check out using the promo code Danny. That'll save you 20% on your first order and you'll rack up points that you can use the same way as cash every time you use the code and you'll also be supporting the show.

Starting point is 00:04:31 Okay. So all of these questions came from over on my Instagram. So if you'd like to have your question featured on the show, please follow me over there. Danny.matranga, same thing on Tik TOK, Twitter, uh, YouTube. You can find me just by searching my name. Uh, you'll probably also find a bunch of old, of old YouTube videos I did for another very popular fitness podcast, Mind Pump. They have a YouTube channel. I actually got started making video content, quality video content, working for them. So I, at least two to three times a week, have somebody share a video I did of like the hip thrust or the reverse lunge or the split squat or the barbell row from like a million years ago before I had facial hair when I was still quite young. So you'll find those too. If you type my name onto YouTube, every exercise tutorial you could

Starting point is 00:05:14 ever imagine, podcasts, nutrition tips, fitness tips, motivational content, all across the socials. First question from Pat Ler Gutai. I actually want to get big and bulky, LOL, uh, from lifting, but how do I do this? I'm actually serious. LOL. Okay. Yes. Getting too big and getting too bulky is something that many women are afraid of or concerned with when attempting to build a fit. And let's say that they'd prefer to be athletic and quote unquote toned without looking masculine and having like hulking traps and a huge upper back. I understand. So whether you are a male or a female, taking anabolic androgenic steroids, sleeping nine hours a night, loading up on a massive amount of dietary protein and

Starting point is 00:06:05 lifting a house is the fastest way to build a shit ton of muscle period. End of story. Now, here's the cool thing. I don't assume many of you are interested in taking androgenic anabolic steroids and that most of you don't want to dedicate your life to being a bodybuilder, but you would like to build a lot of muscle in a very short period of time and have it not suck. So I'm going to give you the cliff notes as curated by somebody who's been attempting to build and maintain muscle for quite some time and someone who's also helped thousands, and I'm not messing around when I say that, thousands of people build effective, productive, and efficient fitness routines. So as far as building muscle goes, to put it as succinctly as possible, to make it as quick as possible, building muscle comes

Starting point is 00:07:01 down to a few extremely important things. You need to train pretty hard, pretty close to failure. You're probably better off doing this across a variety of rep ranges, something in the kind of six to 10 range, something in the 10 to 15 range, and occasionally even things in the 15 to 30 range. You want to stimulate your tissues with stress from the tension, load, and range of motion, as well as from the metabolites that build up when you get a pump. Probably a good idea to diversify across different rep ranges, but focus on stuff you can progress for a long time. Okay, you want to train probably four to six times a week. The less you train, the less specialized the split will be. The more you train, the more

Starting point is 00:07:39 specialized it will be. The less you train, the more you should focus on heavy compound lifts through a full range of motion. The more you train, the more you get to include isolation exercises and specialize on lagging muscle groups. To optimally build muscle, you definitely need to eat in a calorie surplus. Doesn't need to be crazy. 200 to 500 calories a day is going to do. Get your body weight in grams of protein spread across four to five feedings. Use supplements like whey protein to make this easier. As far as non-protein supplements, creatine, vitamin D, magnesium, omega-3, those are kind of the big ones and aim to sleep about nine hours a day. That is how to quite literally optimally build muscle as a natural. Everything you do on top of that that could reasonably help will be less valuable when implemented than what I said. Sleep, nutrition,

Starting point is 00:08:30 training for a long enough time horizon, you can build a crap ton of muscle as a natural. I promise it's just not going to go as quickly as you probably would like it to. That being said, muscle growth has tremendous dividends. And I think people forget this, um, as you age. So many of you are like young and hyper excited and almost like aggressive about wanting to build muscle and build it very quickly. Um, as if, you know, you're not going to gain any benefits from building muscle, uh, as you age, like you're all of the gains come from just getting aesthetic when you're young. So like maximize the volatility, do drugs, do steroids, you know, take pro hormones, take SARMs, do whatever

Starting point is 00:09:16 you can to build muscle while you're young. Cause you want to maximize aesthetics and you know, you don't want to wait. I get it. A lot of young men do this. There's like a masculinity crisis in the moment at the moment. And like having a jacked physique is a way to project masculinity. And I would caution you about using performance enhancing drugs or hormonal augmenting compounds at all, unless you plan on doing this intelligently, because you do have time to get jacked. There's a benefit to being jacked in your thirties, in your forties, in your fifties. So like take your time, try to lift naturally as long as you can. This is for the young men who are considering steroids. Uh, you, you want to be jacked when you're young. I get it. But you also would be fucking really smart to be jacked

Starting point is 00:10:01 when you're old. So why not just approach it longer naturally? That would, that would be, you know, something I feel that I need to caveat. Anytime I hear somebody say, I want to get big and I want to get big fast. Okay. Question from Sam MDK. If I'm prone to put on weight in an area, can the same be more prone for muscle growth? I'm going to share what I would describe as anecdotal data. This is anecdotal data that is not backed by the evidence as far as I'm aware. And by as far as I'm aware, I mean, I didn't go looking for evidence of this in the literature. If it existed, I would be entirely unsurprised. Okay. So this is what I want you to think about, about like the gut, the triceps and the lower back. These are areas that a lot of people complain about body fat

Starting point is 00:10:53 accumulation. So what I would expect for everybody who has a tremendous amount of abdominal fat or triceps fat, they might also have like huge triceps or more easily developed triceps. And in about a decade of doing this, I can say that I've seen that. What I can say is people who have like really well-developed quads and really well-developed glutes oftentimes have quote unquote thicker, lower bodies or dudes that are just like jacked through the chest and the back, sometimes hold a little more weight and body fat on the chest and back. And I think that's just a natural phenotype or expression of how we carry and distribute our fat. And for some people, areas that are muscular on their body are also predisposed to fat gain, but not all areas that are predisposed to fat gain are also predisposed to increased levels

Starting point is 00:11:44 of muscularity. I think we have to consider, again, the triceps and the rectus abdominis, the two areas where people seem to be the most likely to store, hold onto, and kind of maintain stubborn amounts of body fat, areas where they'd prefer not to have body fat. These are in fact the places where muscle growth is limited by virtue of the architecture of the muscle. Sure. But just by like going out in public, you usually don't see like a shit ton of tricep muscle underneath tricep fat or a, you know, obviously well-developed and robust strong core under a ton of tricep fat or abdominal fat, I should say. And I think that obviously makes a lot of sense. Like it really shouldn't come as too much of a surprise

Starting point is 00:12:35 that, you know, just because you gain fat somewhere, you're not more likely to gain muscle there. I just haven't seen it happen enough, frankly, in years of training. 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

Starting point is 00:13:14 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

Starting point is 00:13:55 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. I do think that there are people who have thicker thighs or thicker thoraxes that accumulate a lot of muscle there and they just so happen to also accumulate a lot of fat. I don't think that that's a bad thing. I don't think that's necessarily a detriment to your health. I just think that's what I've seen and that's what I've witnessed. So it's possible. I just can't say with a huge degree of confidence that just because you store more fat in an area doesn't mean you will or won't develop muscle disproportionately. Okay.

Starting point is 00:14:46 Question from underscore one, two, three, underscore five, underscore ran out of my Legion post-workout. Can I use creatine HCL while I wait for my shipment? Okay. So this is essentially a question of, can I switch from temporarily using creatine monohydrate as my primary creatine source into using something like creatine hydrochloride in an effort to kind of bridge the gap, so to speak, and buy some time while I wait for my creatine monohydrate to show up. I would say that is an absolute no brainer, like absolute no brainer. That's going to work completely and totally fine. There's not going to be any problem in waiting for your shipment

Starting point is 00:15:36 to a monohydrate to show up. And while you wait, simply just, you know, placing a focus on, okay, I'm still going to supplement with creatine, right? It's just not going to be the creatine that I've been using. It's not the kind that's been proven to work as optimally, if you want to say so, in the literature. But it's better than taking nothing. And I think this is absolutely fine. I think this is an example of maybe over-intellectualizing something. Remember, you do make your own creatine and remember you do get creatine from food. So if you're eating a good amount of cold water, fatty fish, red meat, animal-based protein in general, and taking hydrochloride for a couple of weeks while you wait for a shipment to show up,

Starting point is 00:16:24 I think you are going to be completely fine. Okay, question from Tranam Gupta, how to get acne, how to not get acne, and still eat eggs for protein. So this is what I will say. I think individualized response to certain foods with regards to dermatological outcomes, to dermatological outcomes, be it eczema, be it acne, be it atopic dermatitis, sensitivity of the skin, are highly individualized. So I can't actually answer the question as to how you can eat eggs and protein powder, I'm guessing is what you mean, without getting acne. I can't say with any certainty that there is a definitive link between these foods and the developments of certain skin conditions. I'm not a dermatologist. However, what I can tell you is things that have worked for me very well and that have helped me

Starting point is 00:17:17 out an awful lot when it comes to managing my own skin and helping me minimize the prevalence of acne. One thing is actually washing my face a little less. I think a lot of people find that surprising to hear. Washing my face too much has actually been problematic for me in the past. I have had a tendency to overdo it and take a little bit too aggressive of an approach to kind of washing and cleansing my skin in a way that I think could be potentially harmful by removing too much oil. Another thing that I think is a really good idea is being sure to moisturize. It can be really, really helpful to moisturize your skin. As for how much moisturizer, the kind of moisturizer, when to apply a moisturizer, I don't know. I think the best is probably after a shower, after you do a cleansing, but

Starting point is 00:18:22 if you can moisturize your skin, that helps a lot. Supplementing with things like zinc and omega-3 have both been extremely helpful for my skin. And I can say that because when I don't have them consistently, I do notice a higher prevalence of these things. I think having a good relationship with a dermatologist can be really helpful. That's something that I've really leaned into that I found to be really helpful over the years. Just having a specialist that you can rely on to help you make good decisions about your health and inform decisions about the inclusion of different things. That's huge. Don't take like a million showers a day. Also like another very drying thing that people have a tendency to do that can exacerbate acne. I have found my acne and skin sensitivities

Starting point is 00:19:12 respond very well to getting more sun. So be sure that you're getting a good amount of sun. And I'm sure most dermatologists would recommend sunscreen, but I'm seeing like a huge bunch of pushback against sunscreen because it contains certain chemicals, not an expert there, just saying I've experienced relatively good results from getting some sun. As for maintaining these foods in your diet, can't say for sure whether that's a good move or not because it's just simply not my area of expertise. Okay. From Layabu Fit, the question is, I'm losing progress when taking a week off or, oh, losing progress when having to take a week or two off on vacation. So guys, I think this is a fear that is really overblown. It's just, it's not something that I think most people need to

Starting point is 00:20:01 be particularly concerned about. Yes, of course, when you don't train for a considerable amount of time, you're going to put yourself in a position to backslide. You're not going to make the same rate of progress not training as you are training. That's the biggest no-brainer of all time. That shouldn't surprise you, but what might surprise you is finding out that after a week or even two away from the gym, you're not going to atrophy into a puddle of no gains, an insignificant mass of your former self. Hardly the case.

Starting point is 00:20:34 Two weeks where you don't train, but you remain focused on getting an adequate amount of dietary protein and remaining on the ball and focused with your sleep, maybe taking supplements like creatine, maybe sneaking in a few body weight workouts if you're on vacation, even if you're injured and recovering, or there's another reason that you can't train. I have found that it tends to be true for most people that the amount of muscle loss in that timeframe is substantially less noticeable than the amount of like strength loss and just feeling a little rusty when you finally get back in the gym. So I don't think you stand to lose a ton of muscle, especially if you focus on nutrition and sleep, but you might lose a little strength.

Starting point is 00:21:18 You might lose a little coordination and writ large. I think that's completely fine because you can always resume training. All right, folks, that does it for this episode. It was a little bit quicker, but an important one. Nevertheless, I want to thank you for tuning in. Please share this, submit your questions over on Instagram, post this on your Instagram story and tag me by leaving a little tag with my username and then leave me a five-star rating and review on Spotify and iTunes. If you're also feeling cheeky and want to help me that way. Thanks so much for tuning in and I'll catch you on the next one.

Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 301: How to Get “JACKED”, Stubborn Weight Gain, Losing Gains on Vacation + MORE!

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