Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 303: 8 Fitness + Productivity “Hacks” That Don’t Suck:

Episode Date: July 13, 2023

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Welcome in everybody to another episode of the dynamic dialogue podcast. In this episode, I'm going to be sharing eight habits and tactics I have used over the years to increase the likelihood that I will get things done, that I will stay fit, that I will stay hydrated, that I will get an adequate amount of protein to build muscle and maintain a lean physique, that my skin will look good, my hygiene will be on point, that I'll maintain my aerobic health, and that I will sleep like a bear. These are eight tips, tactics, and tricks that I think most of you are in a position to deploy and try regardless of resources. As long as you have a gym membership,

you're in a semi-active fitness routine, you might have a little bit of disposable income. Even if you don't, you can really work with a lot of these and modify them to fit your budget. But these are things I've been doing for years that I think you guys will find exciting and really help. Okay. Enjoy. This episode is brought to you in special part. Thanks to our awesome partners over at ice barrel. If you're like me, you want to get the absolute most you can out of your fitness and out of what it is that you're doing in life. I like to make sure that I'm recovering well and prepped for hard workouts. I like to make sure that my cognition is sharp and I like to make sure that I'm doing what I can to maintain my long-term health. And cold water immersion is a phenomenal tool I use and have used for a while to help me

do this. Cold water immersion or taking ice baths is a great way to improve your recovery and performance. Just a few short sessions a week can really make a difference in how you recover. It can increase and improve your heart rate variability. It can enhance performance. It improves increase and improve your heart rate variability. It can enhance performance. It improves mood and brain function. It also provides an awesome boost of energy and focus because when you hop in an ice bath and you get this amazing vasoconstriction effect and your body starts releasing epinephrine and norepinephrine, it kind of lets you reenter the world awake,

energized, excited, and enthused. And I would much rather take an ice bath in the mid afternoon, especially if I had a hard training session in the morning, then consume more caffeine. Ice Barrel allows me to do this in a super sleek, aesthetically pleasing packaging. It's a beautiful barrel that comes with a matching lid for keeping the ice cold and water inside clean, a nice step up stool, a cover. It's portable and durable, and it comes in a beautiful matte black and a gorgeous tan. I have the matte black out on my patio, and I absolutely love the way it looks with the fencing I have around the yard. But you can put this inside, outside, on the front porch, on the back porch, in the side yard. It's quite portable. It's very durable. Like I said,

the design is super, super sleek, and it's very easy to drain to make sure that you are only getting in to cold, clean water designed to help you improve your performance, improve your recovery, enhance the way your brain feels and functions throughout the day. This is an amazing one-time cost tool that once you have it, you use it a couple times a week. It is one of the best investments you can make in your health. And again, if you want to improve your cognition and performance and you have those midday lulls or you want to be more present for your family or for your friends when you get off of work, and you don't want to caffeinate, temperature modulation like ice baths or cold

exposure or sauna heat exposure can be really valuable for increasing that subjective sense of well-being and bringing you back to a place of alertness in a really chaotic world. It's also great for just cultivating resilience. I find I'm much tougher. Again, this is a more anecdotal thing, but I find that I am much tougher, ready to face the day's tasks when I am consistently exposing myself to the elements. Call it bromeopathy, call it anecdote, but I will tell you one thing is for sure, cold water immersion has made a huge difference for my health and wellbeing and just a few short sessions a week. And ice barrel is the sleekest, best looking, cleanest, and most affordable way

to do it reliably. You can head over to icebarrel.com slash Danny to take advantage of their 100% satisfaction guaranteed with again, a 30 day money back guarantee and save 125 bucks on your ice barrel using the promo code Danny. So again, icebarrel.com slash Danny and check out using the promo code Danny to save 125 bucks. Okay, folks. So the first quote unquote hack, this is a fitness hack, if you will, probably the closest thing to an actual hack is the combination of two different modalities, one of which is low intensity aerobic training, the other of which is temperature modulation or sauna. For many years, I have been doing a cardiovascular warm up of about eight to 10 minutes. I do this before every training session,

I find it gets my body warmed up, quote unquote, and quite literally, and just ready to drain. Many of you are familiar with a high quality, well-constructed warmup, right? This is a sensible way to make sure that you are starting on the right foot, right? That you are starting in a position where your body is warm and your tissues are operating at a temperature where they can contract optimally. My guess is that you've also heard of a cool down or an aerobic cool down. And there's a lot of benefits to doing a light aerobic cool down. I often call this a flush. I know that that kind of probably sounds like a little bit of a weird name, but a flush is like basically saying, Hey, my goal is for all of the circulating fluid that is,

you know, in my body, the lymph and the blood to kind of make one little last lap, uh, back through the heart, right? We want to circulate all of this fluid back through the heart and get all of these metabolites a chance to kind of filter out so I don't wake up crazy sore. I have the chance to decompress and reflect on my session. And again, that's something that as a cool down, that might be eight to 10 minutes. But here's the cool thing. If you, let's say, get that heart rate up to 120, 130 on a bike or on an incline walk or on the stairs, as you do your cool down, as you do your flush.

Then you head into the sauna of all places, my favorite place to go, especially thanks to my amazing partner, Sisu Sauna. If you want your very own incredible sauna from home, you can just literally scroll down to the show notes. Sisu has an amazing, amazing product, and they even offer as good of a discount as you can on such a high quality piece of solid lumber. But the coolest thing about going right into the sauna after about a cardio is you will notice that you very, very much see a stabilization of your heart rate after the aerobic spike. So your heart rate will go up, but the return to the, let's call it the pre-cardio level will take much longer and it won't even return to normal until you leave the sauna, which I love because what you're doing and why I would consider this a hack is you're elevating

your heart rate gently so that you can take advantage of that flushing effect. Then you're going into the sauna, allowing the heart rate to stay elevated with, let's be honest, almost no effort, right? The only thing you've got to do is simply just wait it out, right folks? All you got to do, wait it out. Just be tough. Just enjoy the heat. It's not the end of the world. Um, and a lot of people hate cardio and a lot of people would find sauna much more tolerable. So imagine you do eight to 10 minutes of cool down and you get your flush. Then you go into the sauna and you get blood redistributed to those tissues that you just trained. And you get into the sauna and you get blood redistributed to those tissues that you just trained. And you get a legitimate cardiovascular effect because maybe your heart rate was at 130.

And in the sauna, it stays around 110 to 120. So you get some extra low intensity cardio added in. You get your thermoregulation. You get your vasodilation, you get your positive blood redistribution, you get your increase in BDNF alpha, you get your decrease in whole body inflammation, you get your increase in heat shock protein, you get the cardio respiratory bout, you get the sauna that you've already committed to doing many of you a couple of times a week knocked out at the end of your workout. And, you know, just simply quote unquote, super setting it with a little bit of cardio is wonderful. Something I've been doing at the beginning of every week, as I do get into the studio around six or seven in the morning on Monday, I like to start the week with kind of a

bang. I like to get out and get after it. Um, I get up at four or five, depending on what I need to be in there closer to four most days. Uh, and I'll get on the bike and I'll ride five to six miles. Then I'll come back and I'll do a 20 minute sauna. And it feels fantastic to go from one right into the other. And man, oh man, do you start sweating within seconds and it's easy to stay sweating. And sweat rate is not the only reason

to use the sauna. It's not the only benefit of using the sauna, but it is a nice little indicator that, hey, going from an aerobic bout into the sauna is definitely challenging my body in a unique but tolerable way this early in the day. And I always feel wonderful. So this can also be a complete standalone session if If you are looking to increase aerobic fitness, which I think is just wonderful. I've been in the habit of doing my sauna post workout anyway. Um, so I very much understand that, you know, for a lot of people, like that's when they have the time to do it. Um, so that's when they're going to do it. Uh, but you could do this as a standalone session on

recovery days. And in fact, I think you could make the argument that it might better be done on a recovery day. Just go to the gym, do some low intensity cardio, and then get in that sauna as long as you can reasonably tolerate. Okay. The next one I really like is simply managing the time that you take your creatine. For many of you listeners of the podcast, you are already supplementing with creatine. We have discussed this, gosh, I feel like at least a thousand times. This is episode 303. It usually comes up at least two to three times a podcast because when it comes to supplementation that can increase strength, increase insulin sensitivity, increase recovery, increase blood lipids, and has been shown to

increase cognition, concentration, and multiple different brain metrics. There's only three that really even come to mind. It's vitamin D, omega-3, and creatine. Those are the only supplements that I can think of, maybe magnesium because it does work on the nervous system, that so positively increase the output of so many different organ systems. And creatine is probably probably number one for increasing the quality of your anaerobic training and the added cognitive and let's call it cranial or brain related benefits are awesome. They're through the roof. They're so cool. It makes me want to recommend creatine to everybody. But one of the most common questions that I get, to everybody. But one of the most common questions that I get, and this is an interesting one,

when do I take it? And the truth is, it really doesn't matter. The research is pretty clear. You just want to take it every day or most days between two to five grams to maintain your creatine saturation. But that's not a good enough answer for a lot of you because one thing I have learned in a little self-examination and just in some reflection, looking at how similar I am to the people who listen to this podcast and the people who train with me and the people who work with my company online, you guys all are in the kind of market to optimize. If the base and kind of the quote unquote low end is simply, all right, what you got to do is take creatine every day. That might not be a good enough answer. So let me say, well, what if I take it after my workout or what's the best time to take it? Can I get an A into an A plus by taking

it at a certain time? And one thing I've tried with fairly, fairly good results for most people fairly good results for most people is moving it to the post-workout window. Uh, insulin is one of those hormones that gets talked about a lot. Um, so we're going to use it here as a gateway to understanding this, but when you train, you activate an enzyme known as glute four, uh, or essentially, let me make this even simpler. When you eat sugar, insulin is supposed to come to the party, open up this glute four kind of channel for sugar to go into the blood cell or not into the blood cell, into the muscle cell via the blood. Blood sugar is supposed to come out of the blood and pour into the muscle cells so you can metabolize it. People who have diabetes don't make insulin, so they need to take it. People with type 2 diabetes have a hard time making enough insulin, so they don't get the

sugar out quickly enough. Other things can go in through that transporter, that little channel. Creatine is one of them. And if we know that exercise is one of the few things other than insulin that can open that channel, and we know that creatine can use that channel, it might make sense knowing that some people who do have a little bit of intestinal distress with creatine take a post-workout because they will then have a greater opportunity to absorb it at the quickest rate possible. That is purely what I would call anecdata. I like to have my creatine post-workout. This is also because I use a premium creatine product. Legion's Recharge contains more than just creatine. That is my go-to post-workout. This is also because I use a premium creatine product. Legion's Recharge contains more than just creatine. That is my go-to post-workout. I like the L-carnitine. I'm

almost never sore with it. I'm actually speaking to you right now. My traps are sore as hell. I've been crushing shrugs, but it works for the most part well in tandem. But I would say, if you have not yet tried this, try having your creatine post-workout. And if you deal with digestive sensitivity, take two grams post-workout, a gram after, an hour after, and a gram an hour after, and a gram an hour after. So, two, one, one, one. And you can do that with capsules. Just pop two post-workout and then gently kind of work the other three in across the day. Okay. Third tip, probably the longest running tip in terms of things that I have put into practice in my own life. And this is that if you want to be lean, if you want to maintain, um, uh, relatively lean body composition as a male or as a female, if you'd like to be jacked,

if you'd like to be shredded, if you'd like to be fitter than the people at your office, if you'd like to be in better shape than the people that you work with, if you'd like to be fitter than the people at your office, if you'd like to be in better shape than the people that you work with, if you'd like to, you know, hold yourself to a slightly higher standard than, you know, where most people, you know, hold themselves with their physique. It's very important to be lean. It's very important to be full. It's very important to be satiated in an environment where, you know, diabetes is running rampant, food, hyper palatable, hard to turn down, hard to not overeat foods are everywhere. So how do we do this? Well, one thing I have found is that conquering breakfast is a hugely, hugely important tool. That first meal, a lot of people see very good results with weight loss and fasting because they straight skip a first meal.

For many people, you know, coffee and pastries or crappy high calorie, almost zero protein, sugary cereals, that's what they eat in the morning. And that really is a one-way ticket to trash body composition. If you want high quality body composition, it's pretty important, in my opinion, that you get adequate amount of protein. That's the first thing. Two, that you move a lot. Also critical. Three, that you find something sustainable. And for most people, eating a ton of protein, sticking with it and staying active is hard enough as it is. So a tip that's worked incredibly well for me. It's made me more productive. It's made my morning start better. It's given me the ability to go so much faster,

which I absolutely love. 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. My first meal every single day, and this has been the case for over 10 years.

And this is why I give people such a hard time when they're concerned about protein shakes. And this is why I give people such a hard time when they're concerned about protein shakes. It's literally been, literally been a protein shake and a piece of fruit. That's been my first meal. And I don't eat perfect in the back half of the day. In fact, I give myself quite a bit of leniency with dinner. I enjoy quote unquote unhealthy dinners fairly often, a couple times a week because I have so much flexibility for my calories with my food choices. I don't have to worry about running up against a wall when it comes to water, protein, or fiber, because I start my day with like two scoops of protein mixed in 30 ounces of water with some greens powder. I use Legion's Genesis there to get some extra micronutrients

and like an apple or two or a banana or something to that effect. Right. Um, and that is so wildly simple, but like, imagine every morning you get 50 grams of protein, a ton of water, you get a little bit of, let's call it, um, a little bit of like greens exposure. If you want to add some greens to the shake, completely optional. Uh, this takes under, under 60 seconds to make. Imagine if your breakfast only took 60 seconds, it fills me up until almost 12 or one. And then I'll be straight with you guys at like 12 from like 12 to one, all the way into the later part of the day. I'm eating mostly what I feel like eating with a focus on fiber and a focus on protein. Almost nothing's off limits. The old protein sparing modified fast. I don't fast. I eat protein and fruit in the morning and I do it in the fastest and most efficient way possible.

So I can get right into the stuff that matters. And for a lot of you, that's going to work pretty good. If you train fasted in the morning, perfect. If you train early and want food, have something that digests really quickly, like a banana. You know, there's a way for almost every single one of you to swing working this into your routine. Okay. Number four, this is a new one. This is an interesting one that I've been doing for about six months. I really like it. And it's been using a red light therapy panel. Red light therapy has been touted for some very interesting things. But one thing that I think the evidence is fairly clear on is that there is a dermatological effect and there might be an effect on the joints. So my reading of it is this. I don't know how well

red light therapy works for all the things that people on the internet want to tell you it works for. But what I do seem to understand at this point about red light therapy is it has a very unique ability to influence parts of the body, specifically those that contain collagen. So skin and joints. That's what I have seen the best data on, skin and joints. So herein then comes the second part. How long do you need to use it? Well, you need to use it for, you know, multiple minutes. You can't just boom, I turned it on and boom, I turned it off. 10, 20, 30 minute sessions are probably the best for skin, for hair growth, for, you know, based on what I've seen for the, you know, enhancement of joint

quality. So making time for that is not easy at all. So here's what I have done. I have gotten a red light therapy panel and I hang it on the wall of the shower. When I shower, I pull it out of the shower and put it on the counter. When I put on lotion, do my hair, brush my teeth, et cetera. I have added a red light therapy routine to my traditional hygiene routine. So as to better expose my skin to red light, I hit my skin with it, my hair with it. And I have actually worked it into all kinds of different things. So while I'm showering, while I'm getting ready, when I'm doing deep work on the computer. So responding to client emails, a great opportunity to raise the elevated desk, turn it on below the desk, get my calves,

ankles, knees, hips, even genitalia. I'm kidding. That does seem to be very popular with the red light therapy. I've seen that like all over various right wing circles on Twitter. I believe Tucker Carlson of all people did a special on his former primetime Fox News show about biofotomodulation or red light therapy on your testicles for increasing testosterone, which seems like a very roundabout way of doing a shitty way of raising testosterone when you should just be like telling people to lift, but that's not going to be sensational enough for cable news. What the data like really screams to me with red light therapy is if it has collagen, it's probably going to respond well to this. Best data is on skin, hair, and joints. So I like to blast my skin, hair, and joints with my panel when I'm either cleaning myself,

mostly naked, or just working quietly at my standing desk. Great way to temptation or temptation bundle or habit stack something you want with something you'd like or something you want with something you need to do. Big fan of doing this. And I have noticed a very positive effect on my skin. Okay. The fifth tip is to get a step tracker. I mean, this is the fastest one out there, but I have never seen seen something that is so wildly, uh, like strangely enticing to otherwise intelligent and quite frankly, stimulated people like in a world of Tik TOK and YouTube and Netflix and infinite distractions from your phone. The fact that people are still somehow interested in, um, still somehow interested in just looking at their watch and seeing how many steps they took does surprise me because what I end up seeing is like, okay, I know all these really smart people who watch tons of crap on their phone and TV all day, but they are addicted to checking their

step count because it's very gamified. It's very simple. You know, where am I at? Am I going to get there? And I see it a lot on Apple watch. They have an interface that has these rings that you have to close. You can get a step tracker for like 40 bucks. All right, let's be straight. You do not need some crazy ass, uh, big time, uh, monster Garmin, $800 Apple watch ultra $800. I'm going down to the depths of the ocean too soon. Yeah. So unless you're doing that, you don't need a mega awesome step tracker. Those are cool. And the Apple watch ultra is gorgeous. It's definitely something I'd like to get, particularly when they come out with the two. Um, but for tracking steps, just get something cheap. You'd be shocked at how much more you

might want to walk, how much more you're inclined to try to drive that number up. The simple gamification of things is a very powerful tool. Number three, this is for sleep, or number six, sorry, two tips here. This is for sleep. Another big one, very low cost. If you have central air conditioning, or if you have the ability to open a window, put a box fan in it. The box fan typically creates a nice noise, but it's really three things. It's white, pink, or green noise played at night on a speaker or a box fan that creates a soft ambient noise to help drown out anything that could awake you or just disrupt your sleep.

The third, have a window open or have the air conditioner on so you're around 68 degrees in the bedroom. I know for a lot of you that sounds really cold, but that's a good place to be to sleep well. And then the third is use a nasal strip. I've seen a lot of people recommend mouth taping. I've done it before. I've had decent results. I prefer a nasal strip because I'm not just trying to discourage the breathing through my mouth. I'm trying to encourage the breathing through my nose, especially given that I have allergies and a deviated septum. It's more comfortable for me in many situations to breathe through my mouth, which is not good for my sleep quality, for getting into a parasympathetic state. To me, it's really, really important.

So that's my little three-piece stack. You can get a speaker, a wireless speaker. You can use Alexa. You can probably even play these sounds on your phone as long as you keep it plugged in, or you can use a box fan. Create some ambient sound that lowers the likelihood of being woken up in the middle of the night. Keep the temperature regulated to the right temperature, hopefully cooler. Try to sleep cool and encourage nasal breathing with a nasal strip. Those aren't too expensive. I find that these three things really help with my sleep quality. And for you who are listening, you're like, okay, you know, sleep is very, very good for you. Many of you probably have a set bedtime, you know, when you'd like to wake up, but it's not just about duration. It's about quality. And I have found that all three of these markedly increase

the quality of my sleep. I'm recording this at 6.30 in the morning. And I know a lot of you are probably like, oh, I could never at 6.30 in the morning. Well, that's probably in large part due to the fact that you maybe don't sleep enough, but it also could be to the fact that you just sleep like shit when you do sleep. And if you can increase the quality of your sleep, your mornings and your whole day will be so much better. Okay, this is a new one. This is for home gym havers or people who like to work out from home. If you have modest equipment, it's a weekend tip. If you have weekends off and you like to work out on the weekends and you don't go to the gym, maybe you work out from home.

This is the quote unquote three, two to three hour workout. And what this is, is this is combining the work that you need to do at home in the gym and the work that you need to do at the gym together. So for example, this is something I do a lot because my home gym is in the garage, which empties into the kitchen. And on Saturdays, sometimes I'll work out for like two hours, but really I'll only spend about 120 minutes training. I'll spend about 40 minutes when I, but really I'll only spend about 120 minutes training. I'll spend about 40 minutes when I'm resting. And this is something that I think is super cool and productive getting shit done around the house. So for example, let's say the first exercise is dumbbell bench press, warm up with some dumbbells,

set of 10 to 12, go into my next set. Let's go to up a little bit. We do a set of eight to 10. Now, now I'm feeling it. I'm going to a little bit. We do a set of eight to 10. Now, now I'm feeling it. I'm going to need two minutes. Well, better walk inside really quick. Spray down the counters with a cleaner. Okay. Next set. Boom. Come back in. Need some rest. Wipe off the counters. Okay. Final set. Crush it. Last set. Bang. Hit a fourth and final set of a monster chest press. It's going to take two, three minutes. Okay. Grab the broom. Do a little sweeping. of a monster chest press. It's going to take two, three minutes. Okay. Grab the broom, do a little sweeping. It is amazing how well this has worked for me. I get really high quality workouts. I set a timer when I begin a task in the house so that I don't leak and get too far away from him. Um, but it's a way for me to not have to worry while I'm training about rushing to get to the cleaning

I have to do since I'm already at home. I understand that many of you do not have home gyms, so this might not work for you. But try, if you're going to, if you're going to try this, take a weekend day, take a two to three hour chunk of time that you know you can fit a one hour to one and a half hour workout into, and use your rest periods intelligently to knock off small but meaningful tasks that take two to three minutes, the longest sized rest period you'd probably want for non-max strength work. And then gently, just kind of gently work your way back to training. I think it can be very, very simple. Okay. Last one, guys, is the modified Pomodoro method. So, the Pomodoro method is something that I began doing in high school. It is a technique used for studying. It is probably the most popular

studying technique that I can think of. If I'm not mistaken, I believe that the Pomodoro has something to do with a tomato. Maybe it means tomato. But really how the Pomodoro works is by taking your attention span into account. We know that you can really work diligently for like 20 to 30 minutes before you start to lose focus. I found this to be true in my academic work. And I had originally deployed this to better learn anatomy because anatomy is a very dense subject that requires a substantial amount of studying and retention and spelling and vocabulary. So studying it for hours and hours on end can become very dense, make your brain feel saturated and kind of leave you feeling flat. But what works well for me are these Pomodoro breaks of 25

minutes of very focused work, followed by a five minute break. In productivity circles and podcasts, this is considered to be like the lowest hanging fruit, very much the quote unquote kind of intro baby steps way to start. But I think this is amazing. This has worked so well for me. but I think this is amazing. This has worked so well for me. Whether it's deep work, whether it is tasks around the house, whether it is probably everything but training, finding a way to work very hard for 20 to 40 minutes, followed by a five to 10 minute break to simply decompress, to allow my brain the chance to reset, to hop on my phone really quick, to respond to a text, to check in on a baseball game, to spend a little the chance to reset, to hop on my phone really quick, to respond to a text, to check in on a baseball game, to spend a little time with my dog, to maybe have a quick bite,

and then get back to work. If this is a task that's going to take multiple hours, I have found it's very simple. Set the task, set the timer for 20, 30, or 40 minutes. Work on the task. Put the phone away. When it goes off, take the break. Repeat this four to five times. Try this the next time you have a big task. I'm telling you guys, the Pomodoro method is awesome. I do the modified Pomodoro where I push it up a little higher and I don't only do academic tasks, but you guys can do this however you like. Okay, folks, there you have it. That's it. Eight tactics, tips, hacks that will increase your productivity, your easiness of accessing higher levels of fitness,

health, performance, and hopefully even aesthetics. Managing, looking good, feeling good, moving good, being strong, being productive, being successful in your career and relationships is hard. So we all need high leverage habits that make a huge difference. And I think all of these fall into that category. Pick one or two, try them. Leave the podcast a five-star rating and review on Apple and Spotify. And I'll see you on the next one, folks. Thank you for listening. you