Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 309: barefoot training, fasting, PCOS, CSCS + more!

Episode Date: August 3, 2023

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Welcome in, folks, to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. As always, I'm your host, Danny Matranga. And in this episode, I'm going to be discussing 12 reasons why your physique is not changing the way you would like it to at the pace you would like it to. So many of the people who listen to this podcast are trying to get more out of their life. They want more health. They want more productivity. They want efficiency. And a lot of you want to look better, straight up. And here's the thing, going to the gym is a habit or training, I should say, is a habit that you will need to have in place in order to change the way you look, but it's not enough. It's what you do when you're there. It's how you structure

the training that you do. And so many people have the routine part figured out, but it's very apparent that they have yet to figure out how to train properly to maximize physique change. So I'm going to go over 12 of the most common pitfalls and why your progress might be slower than you like or not there at all. Enjoy the episode. This podcast wouldn't be possible if it wasn't thanks to support from our awesome partners, one of whom is Vivo Barefoot. Vivo makes the best barefoot training shoe on the market. For years, I stayed away from barefoot training shoes, despite knowing the benefit of low cushion, wide toe box shoes for the health of our feet, the intrinsic musculature that helps support everything that we do. I stayed away from these shoes because I thought they were

ugly. But that was until, of course, Vivo started producing some absolutely gorgeous barefoot training shoes. These are low cushion, lightweight, breathable trainers that have a ton of bend, a ton of flex, low cushioning to provide for optimal stimulation of the proprioceptors at the bottom of your foot. Fun fact, 70% of the proprioceptive cells in your body, the cells that tell your body where it is in space to help you be coordinated, to help you create movement, balance, stability, all of these things, they're located on the bottom of your foot fighting to make contact with some kind of surface so they can get the tactile feedback they need

to help you optimize and coordinate movement. That's why when you're barefoot, you probably feel more stable and more connected to the ground. And I have never found a shoe that feels better to train in, not just train my clients and stand around in for eight hours a day, but literally train in. Tons of fantastic mobility out of my toe box, the ability to spread my toes, all in one beautiful climate-friendly package. I'm a huge fan of the Primus Knit Lights. I have them in obsidian. I have them in bright white. And I absolutely love this shoe. I have been raving about it for three or four weeks straight. I've never had a better training shoe in my life. You simply can't beat these. They feel great. They look great. My fiance even said, wow, those shoes, and I quote, make it look like you know what you are doing,

which that's all I need to hear. Not sure exactly what that means, but I'm guessing it means good things. All the trainers and coaches at my studio said they make my calves look great. And I think this is because when you're wearing a barefoot shoe, you're using more of the intrinsic muscle of your foot and ankle complex that is so imperative for movement. Trust me when I say you've never had a better pair of training shoes than you will when you try Vivo Barefoot. You can't beat these. And Vivo is offering listeners of this podcast a special 10% off order by using the code DANNY10 on VivoBarefoot.com. You can just scroll down to the show notes and grab a pair. But these shoes are fantastic. They're beautiful. They train

incredibly well. They're durable. And I promise they'll be the best pair of shoes you've ever had in the gym. Again, that's vivobarefoot.com and check out using the promo code DANNY10 to save 10% on the best pair of shoes you've ever owned. So when it comes to optimizing training for results, for physique enhancement, for changing the way that you look, there are a lot of different levers that we can pull on. Before we get too into the weeds though, I think the first and the most important one to touch on, this is the one that I see the most. I think this is the most common problem, I should is just the plain and simple inability to stick to a program. I cannot think of anything more apparently helpful, for lack of a better term, than sticking with the program that it is you have identified as being a good way to train. So many people find good programs,

programs that work with their schedule, maybe coaches and programs that they like, right? They find these things. They stick with them for one to two weeks. We call these people program hoppers. They're out there. People who love to kind of jump from one program to the next, to the next, to the next without ever finishing them. And this is the thing. We do this because we're bored and we're creatures who love novelty. And I'm not here to bash on enjoying novel training stimuli and novel training concepts. Trust me when I tell you, I've been training for a long time and a little bit of excitement and novelty is almost always welcomed. But good programs are often boring programs and people don't like to hear that.

And I understand why, because who the heck wants to get involved with something boring? why? Because who the heck wants to get involved with something boring? But the truth is, the best gains you're going to make on a program are in weeks three or weeks four. They're not in weeks one and two. If the program is 10 weeks long, you're probably going to make the most progress in weeks nine and weeks 10. And so many people are incapable of sticking with a program or a nutritional strategy to support that program, right? Like one of the biggest reasons people's physiques don't change is obviously nutrition, which we're not even going to talk about in this episode. We're barely going to touch on nutrition. We're talking about training, but in the very same way, people fail to stick with a diet for long enough to achieve success, the kind of success they'd like with their physique.

We see the same thing with program hopping. People who do something for one to two weeks max, get bored and they want something new, or they think that something new will speed things along. When the truth is, it is the inability to stick with a program that makes your kind of perpetual hamster wheel of result chasing takes so much longer than it needs to. I've got a good key on this because we have a number of app-based programs. We have Home Heroes, we have Elite Physique, we have our one-on-one online coaching, we have the coaching that we do in studio. And the clients who really stick with things through the first couple of weeks, through the first couple of months, even who let programs

kind of compound, who let the results kind of stack. Those are the clients who do very well. Those are the clients who change their physiques the most. So I have to hit this as the number one point. In all likelihood, the number one reason your physique is not changing is you are not staying focused. You are not staying on program. Your nutrition is probably not consistent and neither is your effort. So you need consistency in sticking to the plan, consistency in high effort training, and consistency in making sure that your nutrition is lined up with where it needs to be to see success. Okay. The number two reason your physique isn't changing is you think you're a trainer or you think you're a coach and you're not, or you are a trainer, you are a coach and you suck at taking your own advice.

A lot of trainers and coaches write good programs for themselves and don't stick to them. That would be the first point I made. But a lot of people think they're a good trainer or think they are a trainer, write themselves a terrible program or a program that is maybe too much volume for them to recover from, not enough intensity to drive strength. It's just asymmetrical. It's not where it needs to be. And because they are doing it themselves, and many people don't know their blind spots, they're opening themselves up to kind of spinning their wheels and executing or showing up to do a subpar program. A lot of times you will get better results when somebody else does this for you because they will be

removing the likelihood of you including only the exercises you like. We'll talk about this in a minute. They will eliminate the choice of perhaps poor or inefficient exercise. They will include the exercises that maybe you hate doing that are highly efficient, right? I would not recommend programming for yourself if you don't know what it is that you're doing. If you have a physique specific goal, it's probably better to have somebody else do it for you to hold you accountable to it. Or at the very least, when you're making these programs, make sure that you're not making the next three mistakes. I guess you could say the next nine because all of these are related to programming. The third thing that really holds people back, and I hinted at this last time, is selecting for and in their programming, selecting for or just making a habit out of doing exercises that they like and only exercises that they like. This can be exercises sizes from an orthopedic standpoint that feel good on the joints.

Not all exercises that feel good are bad. In fact, you should probably do more exercises that agree with your anthropometry, how you're built, your mobility, how you move, right? Your stability, how coordinated you are. Then just do some run of the mill program that does not, you know, take these things into account. that does not take these things into account. But a lot of people go to the gym and they repeat exercises that they like with weights they're comfortable using in rep ranges that they like to train in. And that can be a really big problem because many of us have a much greater potential for growth when we get outside of our comfort zone,

be that in life or the gym. And if you have not done an exercise in a long time, because maybe it's challenging and it's more efficient than an exercise that you're doing for the same muscle group, doing the novel exercise that's more efficient and damages more tissue or helps you train more tissue is going to yield better results. And if you simply stay away from that, cause you do not like it for some subjective reason, you might be, you know, holding yourself back. The fourth most common thing that I see holding people back when it comes to getting results with their physique is the inclusion of just inefficient or terrible exercises. So these are oftentimes things that people open up their Instagram, they go online,

they look for new exercises, they look for something cool, something spicy, something sexy, you know, and they want to include these things because when you include these things, you get that jolt of novelty, that jolt of freshness, that jolt of excitement. But if you are allocating time, allocating volume, allocating recovery resources to these inefficient kind of crappy exercises. So I'll give you an example. Let's say you want to grow your glutes and you're doing 30 minutes a day of band work. That's not bad, but that's 30 and it's not going to really inhibit your ability to recover, but that's 30 minutes. You're not doing heavy Romanian deadlifts, heavy, you know, hip thrusts, heavy 45 degree hip extensions. You, there's an opportunity cost to everything that you do. And so if you make time for exercises that are not necessarily even aligned with your goals, let's say you're an athlete who needs to get better at

sprinting and you're doing five sets a day of like leg extensions to failure. That is not a bad exercise, but it's not going to drive sprint speed. Let's say you want to build huge legs and you're spending 25 minutes of your leg day doing box jumps. Box jumps might build power. They might build strength that will have carry over to building big legs, but they're very fatiguing. They require a lot of motor unit recruitment, and they will probably take away down the road if you do too many of them in the same session from how much output you can have directly on the thighs to grow the thighs. So the inclusion of exercises that have no business being in the program because you see them and you think they're cute,

or you see them and you want to include them might distract you. It's the whole chasing multiple rabbits thing. I see this a lot. Well, I want to get big arms and big shoulders, um, or I want to get a big glutes. Um, but I don't want to stop doing this. I don't want to stop doing that. Or I also want to be athletic and I also want to be mobile. So we piece together these incredibly complicated CrossFit ask multimodal, you know, different variable programs that include all these different physical properties. We're trying to train strength. We're trying to train athleticism. We're trying to train mobility. We're trying to train hypertrophy, all of which will be somewhat stimulated by any type of training. But people want to change how they look and they include too many exercises that are not

helping them do that. Not because they don't know better. They're just trying to chase too many exercises that are not helping them do that, not because they don't know better, they're just trying to chase too many rabbits. 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. The fifth reason that your physique isn't changing, probably the one that's going to hurt your feelings the most, is that you just train like a softie. You don't train hard. You have to train close to failure to build muscle, period. And if you do it at three reps, eight reps, 12 reps, 15 reps, 25 reps, 30 reps, whatever, you're going to build some muscle. Okay. It's not necessarily the rep range. In fact, I'll make an argument for why you should use different rep ranges here in a minute. It is the intensity. It is the proximity to failure. And you should be to, to, you know,

select from points three and four, selecting exercises that lets you train close to failure. And you should be to, to, you know, select from points three and four, selecting exercises that lets you train close to failure. Okay. Safely. And you should not be doing too many exercises that failing on them will like, you know, result in your death. So for example, like I want to train legs. Well, you know, use squats, use deadlifts, but maybe do the closer to failure work on leg press and leg extension, you know, know how to allocate that highest intensity closest to failure work, of course. Right. Um, but if you're never reaching a point in your set where you're thinking to yourself, man, I don't know if I'm going to get this next rep, or I think I maybe have like one or two more, you're leaving a lot on the table.

And if you have not trained with a coach in person, if you have not trained with somebody who trains hard in person, there's a very good chance that you have no idea what a hard set feels like. And a hard set closer to failure is going to do way more for building muscle and changing your physique than a set simply done to completion. When you see three sets of 12 and you grab a weight that you know you can do 12 reps with, you're probably fucking up. You're better off doing a weight that you know you can get 10 reps with, but you're not sure about 12, getting to 10 and like pushing, pushing and being like, oh shit, I got 11, not 12. I missed the assignment.

Well, the fact of the matter is the rep range you get, you shouldn't be able to do that many more reps than what's assigned. So if I assign a client 15 and they do 17, go up and wait. Or if you do, you pick a weight, you can only do 12 on an assignment of 15. That's actually not that bad because you picked a weight that challenges you and you were unable to reach the set, you know, kind of parameter or the goal, but you got close with a challenging stimulus. So, you know, not training like a softie is really important. And I know that that seems like super unscientific, but a lot of you have an amazing habit. I'm going to the gym six to seven days a week, but you can only do that because you don't train hard. Like, I know that sounds a little bit

like a condemnation, but I used to go six, seven days a week. And then I realized I'm only able to do this because I never truly train hard. And the minute I started training closer to failure, it was like, holy shit, like four to five sessions is probably all I can handle. And I got way better results from less training because the training was better. It was harder. It was more intentional. So do not make that mistake. Number six, you never focus on strength as a physical property. To look better, you need to be able to handle more volumes, train closer to failure, and develop muscle, sure. But it also helps to be able to get strong because that lets you use more weight across a variety of different movements. If you get strong on the overhead press, you get strong on the bench press, you'll be better at

any shoulder and tricep and pack isolation movement and be able to do more weight with them. And if those are the exercises that you use to train with that high stimulus, that close to failure stimulus, that'll be wonderful. I'm not saying go to failure on bench and go to failure on overhead press. I'm saying use compound movements across your training career to actually develop some strength so that you're moving real weight relative to your fitness in the gym. Like if you just go fluffy, fluffy light all the time, chasing pumps, chasing pumps, never, ever, ever building mechanical tension across the tissue, across the skeleton, you're leaving

so much up for like, not necessarily up for interpretation, but you're leaving so much up to chance. There are so many clear, clear studies and so much clear evidence that hypertrophy and muscle growth and the way you look is correlated to the ability to, you know, really spread tension out across the tissue, not just get a burn, not just get a pump. And I think training with a substantial load through a full range of motion on compound movements, developing strength as a physical property is huge in elite physique. The physique focused female app training group that we have at least once every three months, we do some kind of strength block or strength work inside of a

hypertrophy block to maintain strength and allow these athletes to develop, you know, real prime mover strength that they can then use on the isolation exercises required to grow the glutes, to grow the hamstrings. You know, I do this all the time for my own training, even if it's just like, Hey, I'm starting my session with something compound and a little heavier because I can rely on this to help me develop strength, which I know is integral in the long run to getting in the best physical condition I can. Because if I'm strong, I can do more volume across these isolation exercises by virtue of being able to use more weight. Okay. The seventh problem, and we hinted at this early, is you refuse to track multiple things. If you want to get the most out of your physique, tracking your training, your nutrition, and

your sleep is really important. You need to get seven to nine hours a night of sleep. You need to try to make progress week to week in your training. I recommend printing out training logs and writing in them, using an app that allows you to do this, hiring a coach to monitor your training. You need to make sure that you're tracking what it is that you're doing in the gym. You don't necessarily need to write this down or use your phone. Some people can do this intuitively, but if you can't tell me what you did the last time you did an exercise, how are you going to know that you can progress it? And a lot of people only track one freaking thing at a time, which is absolutely insane to me.

Absolutely insane to me. If you're going to track training, track nutrition too. It doesn't take as long. And you can honestly pre-track a lot of the food that you eat anyway, but track the stuff that has the greatest likelihood of changing your physique, your training, your food, and your sleep. Okay. This is the one that I am the most guilty of. And maybe you are too. And that is just rushing through sessions to get them done. Uh, you know, if you are doing your sessions, that's wonderful. If you're completing your sessions, that's amazing. You're already in the top demographic. Most people don't train at all, but rushing through them to try to get them done because you're anxious, maybe because you slam too much pre-workout because you have too many

different things on your mind. That can be a reason you're not getting the most out of your training. I'm not necessarily saying, you know, take two hours in the gym. I'm just saying, do not rush the work that needs to be done. Make sure it's work of a high quality. Don't rush through rest periods. I heard a great quote from my friend, Jordan Lips, who said, if you're not rush the work that needs to be done. Make sure it's work of a high quality. Don't rush through rest periods. I heard a great quote from my friend, Jordan Lips, who said, if you're not taking your rest periods or you find that you don't need your rest periods, then it's probably the case that you're not training very hard. Again, that goes back to the point we made in training like a softie. If you are just like, bing, bing, bing, I can get everything done super fast and you're not using some like advanced training concepts like, okay, I went three shoulder

exercises in a row and I used the weight that I knew I could use on all three. I mean, that's like saying to me like, okay, you knew you, you totally sandbagged it on all three sets. If by the time you get to that third exercise, let's say it's like a giant set, we'll talk about intensifiers down the road. You're like still using good weight. Then the first two, you were probably holding back. So do not rush through at the cost of your training. I see this happen way too much and it's a legit serious problem when it comes to getting real results. Okay. The ninth tip, you only ever do the same rep range. All rep ranges have the unique ability to help you cultivate muscle mass with the exception of like one to three reps,

you know, five to seven, eight to 10, 10 to 12, 15 to 20, 20 plus. These can all elicit hypertrophic stimulus using different pathways in the body, like mechanical tension or metabolic stress. And if you want to get the most out of your training and you want to get your physique to a new level, you might as well take advantage of every single avenue you can to change the way you look and to stimulate your tissue. So select rep ranges that are reasonable for the exercise. Like a set of 20 barbell squats is probably a terrible choice as is like a set of three leg extensions. You're probably better off thinking, okay, if it's a compound, I want to do between five and 12. If it's isolation, that's

where I play with the higher rep ranges, the intensifiers, whatever. But don't be afraid to change the rep range or to use multiple. I'd highly recommend it. This is how we program for everybody, whether they want to change their physique or develop different physical properties. Okay. Another thing I see is just arbitrarily only ever doing three sets of an exercise. Sometimes you can do four. Sometimes you can do five. Sometimes you can do six. Now, the more sets you do, the less total exercises you should do. We'll talk about that again in a minute. Sometimes that's actually helpful, but don't think it needs to be three sets of 10, just because that's what every influencer does.

I do three sets of 10 shoulder press, three sets of 10 front raise, three sets of 10 lateral raise, three sets of 10 rear delt raise. That's my shoulder day. It's like, okay, that's fine. Nothing wrong with that if you can progress it. But a form of progression is just to do the same thing the next week, do it with four sets. And then the week after that, do it with five sets. So you can add sets to exercises that again, going through a checklist are exercises that are efficient, are exercises that load a lot of tissue through a full range of motion are exercises that you can train hard on and close to failure on. And instead of being like, Oh, what's another

exercise I could do and picking a shitty inefficient one. Like we talked about not doing and just do an extra set of the ones that, you know, work really well. I'd highly recommend doing this. Uh, the 11th mistake people make is doing too many exercises. I get questions all the time. Like is eight exercises too many on a leg day? I have never done a leg day where I got to exercise eight and had shit to give. What are you doing on exercises one through seven? I mean, this is obviously not including warmups. Like let's say you do an eight minute warmup on the treadmill, some open books, some 90 nineties, some body saws. Well, that's like technically four things, but I know people

who go to the gym and they're like, Oh, I do leg press, walking lunges, split squats, lying hamstring curls, leg extensions, ab crunches, hanging leg raises. That's fine. But if they're like all for the same muscle group, like I literally did eight exercises just for my glutes, I just say pick the four that actually lets you load the damn tissue close to failure and do more sets. The number of exercises you do, isn't that important? The number of sets you do that are simulating is important. Keep that in mind. Okay. The 12th and final thing that I see a lot of people neglecting is the use of intensifiers to make or create an opportunity for more density in the session, which is more total work. So things like supersets,

drop sets, giant sets, circuits, these are intensifiers that when used intelligently can be quite helpful. When you use them arbitrarily and, a lot of thought, they're just speeding your training along. But if you use them intelligently, you can pack in more volume, more density, and yes, it will make your training more efficient. You'll be able to get less or more done in less time, which is a way of doing more without rushing. So folks, there you have it. There are 12 tips and 12 reasons that your physique's not changing. The first is you're a program hopper. You can't stick to anything. The second is you fancy yourself a coach and a good programmer and you're not. The third is that you only really pick exercises that you like and not

things that are stimulating. The fourth is you include unnecessary inefficient exercises that you see on social media or that are driving physical properties that directly compete with hard training. The fifth is you just don't enjoy or can't train hard. The sixth is you never train for the physical property of strength, which is actually quite important for changing how you look. The seventh is you only track training or nutrition. You never track both long enough to see any changes. The eighth is you rush through every session just to get them done and check boxes. The ninth is you don't use multiple rep ranges and take advantage of different training stimuli. The 10th is that you think three sets is gospel and you never try doing more than that. The 11th is that you opt for doing more exercises instead of more quality volume. And the 12th is that you don't use

intensifiers intelligently. All of these things can help you see results, folks, and will help you change your physique. If you want more tips like this, be sure to hit that subscribe button. Follow me across social media. You can apply for coaching if you need help. All at the links in the bio of this show. You just scroll down to the show notes and you'll find everything there. If you would be so kind as to leave me a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, wherever you listen,

it will help more people find the show and help me get more people in shape. Thanks so much for listening and I'll catch you on the next one.