Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 322: Beginner lifting programs, blood work + more!

Episode Date: September 21, 2023

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Welcome, everybody, to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. As always, I'm your host, Danny Matrenga, and in this episode, we will be discussing how to get into resistance training if you are a beginner, a complete and total novice. We'll also be talking about how to optimize for recovery, blood work, lab work, how to get that done, how to develop the quads with dumbbells, diving into a variety of different one-on-one questions after we kind of tackle how it is that someone might get started weight lifting. This will be great for trainers.

This will be great for anybody who's really into lifting, who's an enthusiast, who wants to share this with people. You'll learn a lot today. So enjoy the episode. 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 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. 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. 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 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. Okay, the opening subject of the episode today is going to be how to get started with resistance training if you are a beginner. And this question was asked

by House of Caitlin. And the question was, beginner lifting weights, what program to do? I'm clueless. And I thought, you know, this is something that's worth unpacking over probably one, maybe even two episodes. But I think we can keep it succinct and then expand on it from there. So if you are new to resistance training, before you even get started with a program, I think the most important thing to get clear on is what are your goals, if you have any, and can we work towards those goals and build a program to kind of get you to those goals? If we can, that will probably be better for adherence than resistance training just because. And what I mean by this is,

if you're going to go ahead and begin a resistance training routine because it's something that you've been told you should do, the probability of success is lower than if you have a clear reason for starting. So for example, my friend started lifting and I kind of want to try it out is going to get you in the door, but is it going to keep you going? And that's hard to say, but I want to get in shape because I had a wedding in 12 weeks, or I want to get in shape because my bone density is decreasing, or I want to get in shape because I'd like to live longer. Those are more concrete. And so I think the first thing you should always do when you're looking to begin a hobby or looking to begin any kind of time

allocation towards the development of a new skill, maybe building a business, is to just try to get very clear on your goal. And in fitness, we talk a lot about SMART goals and we won't talk about all of the acronym, but the first two letters of SMART are specific and measurable. And this acronym is used all the time, specific, measurable, attainable, or actionable, realistic, and time bound. So the big ones are specific and measurable. And so I think what you want to do is say, Hey, I want to begin a weightlifting routine to improve my health specific measurable by lifting two to three days a week. That is going to get you so much further than I'm just going to go to the gym, which is definitely good. So start first with, you know, write down the specific outcome you would like

and a measured, let's call it commitment to get there. I want to get better at golf. So I'm going to go to the driving range twice a week. Okay. Then it could be, you can obviously add even more details. When I talk about specific, you can get really specific, but that's the most important thing you can do from the very beginning of the process. Identify what it is that you would like to achieve as the outcome, write it down, come up with measurable steps to get there. This is also a very effective tactic, probably more so effective, the more advanced you get with your fitness. As you cultivate more and more fitness and you develop different adaptations like strength or muscle, results do come more slowly and you can't chase too many rabbits. So to continue to fine tune, you oftentimes need to allocate a considerable

amount of resources towards one thing. So having this system in place of like, look, what's the goal? I'm going to attack it. How long am I going to attack it? What's the protocol? They're built off of these foundational habits. But let's answer the question, what program to do? So I think the sweet spot for novices, and I believe this to be the case because I've trained in person for so many years. And when you train in person, you get tremendous exposure to people who have never lifted a weight in their life, especially if you train at like a big box gym the way I did for so many years before eventually opening my own studio.

So you end up in a situation where, you know, 60, 70% of the people that you work with have never worked out before, have ambitious goals, and only have like one, two, three days at the most because of the other commitments they have that they're willing to allocate to training. I noticed I didn't say they only have three days. I think you can always make the time. But for some people, they're not ready to make that commitment. And you have to be honest, if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably a health and fitness enthusiast, or you're somebody looking to get in shape. And you'll know what I'm talking about here. But, you know, we, we have a tendency to

always make time for the stuff we really like, and this stuff that really rewards us. And you know, you say a lot of people say things like, show me how you spent your time and I'll, I'll know a whole lot about you. Um, and I think that's a great point. If you're not exercising right now, allocating like five days a week to it is kind of crazy. Like for example, if you I'll use golf again, if you're like, Oh, I want to get a little better at golf, you're probably not going to go golf or play or go to the driving range five days a week. So if you are clear, like, hey, I want to get in shape. I actually think that going three times a week is great. Two times isn't even bad if you're just getting started because it allows you to kind of dip your toes in the water and making the full commitment, the full dive is always going to get you there faster, but it's

just not reasonable for most people. And a lot of you who are newer are not really going to be in a position where you can recover from a super intense, super arduous workout, right? Like I, again, another thing I learned over the many years I spent working in, you know, a more commercial gym setting, most people can't train two days in a row when they first get started because the soreness they accumulate after a training session due to being so detrained is just genuinely uncomfortable. And for a lot of people, it's even off-putting. So three training sessions a week is great because what it allows you to do, and you can do this with one session a week and do this with two, the key is to start. And I think for most of you, you're going to probably want to make a

commitment of at least three days because I think it's just like learning a language. The more you practice it, the better it sticks. The only problem is learning a language doesn't make you sore and not be able to sit down on the toilet. So because of your poor ability to recover generally, and we'll talk about recovery in a more advanced context later, and that's at a global and local level. So you can't really recover well at like, if I train quads, my quads are sore, but if I train my whole body and spread it out at my whole body's fatigued. So, you know, a day in between allows you to rest. It allows you to recover. A lot of you will be more sore on the second day, but it's less about that perception and more about the genuine ability to recover. Although this horn is does suck, but three days would allow you to train the entire body three

times, two days, you could train the entire body twice in each session should include one of the following movement patterns, a push, a pull, a squat and a hinge. And I think you can add to that an aerobic warmup of eight to 15 minutes. The most important thing to remember about the aerobic warmup is that it can be scaled to your fitness and it is a warmup. So this is an opportunity to get your heart rate up, to get blood flowing quite literally, to increase the temperature of the tissue that you are about to train from there. Okay. Let's say you go three times a week. You do an eight to 15 minute warmup. That could be 24 to 45 minutes of zone two cardio on a goal of about 150 minutes a week.

That's a goal that I set for most clients. So we'll circle back to this in a minute. So let's say you do 15 minutes warmups for easy numbers. You have 15 minutes of incline walking, and then you do a 30 minute session. In that 30 minute session, you do three sets of a push movement, three sets of a squat, three sets of a hinge, three sets of a pull, something to that effect. Choose only compound movements. Pushing compound movements are overhead presses, bench presses. These can be machine presses. These can be dumbbell presses. Bench presses These can be machine presses. These can be dumbbell presses

These can be cable presses. These can be push-ups Overhead or horizontal pressing is good Both work the chest shoulders triceps and core all together Big muscles big muscles that all push so we need to pick the pushing movement for the day And if we push horizontally on monday Maybe we push vertically or overhead on Wednesday. And then we kind of have a freestyle on Friday where we select a pushing movement we have not yet done. For the pulling movements, we're talking about chin-ups, pull-ups, lat pull-downs,

rows, face pulls, anything that works the muscles of the back and the biceps. These are super important muscles that most people do not have strength in. So I would recommend doing a good amount of this. Let's say you do three sets of pressing. I don't think it's a bad idea to do four sets of pulling. You do need to have a strong back and strong pulling muscles. So those are the upper body movements. And just like with the pushes, you have vertical and horizontal pushing that slightly bias different muscles of the chest, shoulders, triceps. When you pull at different arm paths, say it's overhead, 45 degrees, totally parallel, neutral, whatever, right? You got like

rows, which are more horizontal and pull downs and pull ups, which are more vertical. You're going to work different muscles of the back. For the squat and the hinge. You know, we're talking about variations of squats, which can be lunges, can be leg presses, can be goblet squats, can be barbell squats, could even just be movements that train the anterior portion of the leg, like the quad. If you're totally deconditioned, a lot of people select the wall sit as an exercise to train the quads isometrically. I'm not saying that's a good one. I'm just saying like we're trying to train the front half of our body, our hip flexors, our quads, and our core. And hinges train our posterior chain, the backside of the body. So things like deadlifts,

Romanian deadlifts, any isolated hamstring work, hip thrusts, et cetera. So those four patterns allow us to train each and every muscle. It also allows us to build tremendous intramuscular and intramuscular coordination. We get coordination from doing the movement, but we also orchestrate multiple muscles working together. Every push, pull, squat, and hinge that I can think of is categorically going to be a compound movement, meaning you're going to get way more bang for your buck than when you do isolation exercises. I would say if you have more than 30 minutes to allocate to the gym, then you can select isolation exercises to develop any muscles you want to develop or develop strength

in areas that you feel or have assessed to be weak. But I wouldn't recommend spending too much time on isolation exercises if you only have three days a week to train or you're going to make three days a week worth of commitment. And I would recommend them even less if you have two or one. Those compound movements become really important. I think for the average gym goer, you're looking at two to four sets of each of these exercises, at least one of those sets being a warmup set where you practice doing the movement, and then two to three sets following that, or one to three sets following that, where you work fairly hard, pushing through a full range of motion without pain in the joints to challenge the muscle.

Your sets should probably range between 6 to 15 reps when you first get started, biasing or skewing more towards the 10 to 15 repetition range because this will allow you to train with lower loads and it will also allow you to generate more repetitions to increase the quality of your movement across the various different exercises that you're going to be executing. Which is a long way to say that it's probably a better idea to go a little lighter and do a few more to practice the movement and get better at it than it is to start going super heavy right away. And then over time, you can go up or down. You can add a set. You can decrease the reps, but add weight and keep the reps the same, but add weight. You can keep the weight the same and do more reps, but make sure that you're training through like a full range of motion. There's so many different things that you can do to adjust or manipulate a program up or

down. But truthfully, the longer I train and the more I program, the less exercises I use and the simpler things get. And I think it's pretty fascinating when you think about it. I have more knowledge and I can apply as much complexity as I want, and I can apply as much complexity as I want, but for the average person who is truly just getting started, there is not a whole hell of a lot to gain from overdoing it. I've heard this analogy given many times, this sunburn analogy. When you first start training, it's like going out into the sun for the very first time and you're quite likely to get burned. And if you get burned, you can't train until the burn goes away.

AKA you can't go outside until the burn goes away or it'll get worse. So what you want to do is you only want to go outside in this analogy. It's trained as much as you can without getting burned. And in this, it means like train as much as you can, but still be able to show up again two days later. And for a lot of you, like one set is going to fry you for a couple of days. I cannot tell you how many times I have taken a client who has never weight trained or who has not weight trained in a considerable amount of time.

Usually these are assessments or clients who I'm seeing for the very first time. And we do one set of an exercise with an output that I would say categorically, like you have easy, moderate, hard, very intense. That's usually firmly in moderate, maybe sometimes in very intense and one set. Like I can think of times where I've been like, okay, we're going to try the leg press and the client will do 10 to 12 and they'll be like, whew, that's a lot. I, my knees hurt. I think we should move on. And you'll be like, well, uh, you know, I'm not going to sit here and challenge you on this. I certainly want to build a good relationship and want to make sure that you feel

safe. So let's choose an exercise for the lower body that might be less strenuous on the knee joint. Follow me. We'll go to that. 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. Maybe we then circle to like something for hamstrings or glutes. That person will come in and be like, oh my God, my quads have never been so sore. And you'd be like, hmm, I wonder what it was. It couldn't have been that one set of leg press. It absolutely can. For some people, one set of leg press is going to be enough to

totally crush them. And I think that's pretty okay. You know, the less training that you can get away with that drives the adaptation you want, the better. And for newbies, for novices, the adaptation you want, the better. And for newbies, for novices, you know, for people who are just getting started, you know, three times a week is a big commitment. And I know a lot of you like, fuck that. No, it's not. And like, I, there's a part of me that says, yeah, no, it's not either, but acknowledge that if you haven't been doing something for a while to do three times a week is a good amount. So that's my, my best bet. And you can scale that back to two times and you can scale that back to one time.

And if you're a beginner and you'd like to go four times a week, um, I would recommend going and doing some upper body sessions and some lower body sessions, two for the upper, two for the lower and apply the same principles. Just do your hinging and squatting on your lower body days and your pushing and your pulling on your upper body days. And again, we'll go back to that cardiovascular warmup. Let's say you're getting anywhere between like 30 to 60 minutes of cardiovascular exercise during the warmup for your resistance training. I think on the days that you do not train in an effort to build the identity of being a fitter or more fit person in the spirit of casting a vote for, you know, becoming fully aligned, stepping into full alignment with your fitness, you should do some walking or some type of cardiovascular exercise. Your heart is

very important as is your vascular health, as is your ability to locomote. And you'll be able to do that much better if you take a little time on your rest days to get moving on your non-lifting days. And I think if you do 20 minute walks, seven days a week, you'll almost get to 150 minutes. So what I would recommend is on the days that you do not weight train, do a 30 minute walk and let the warmup before your weight training supplement that. And you should have with a commitment of two to three days a week, a full anaerobic training program, meaning a full weight program that helps you build strength and muscle. And again, you can tailor that to exactly what it is you would like to accomplish. If you want to be stronger, you can do lower reps

and as many compounds as you can. If you want to get more muscular, you can do closer to failure with your training with a higher potential volume and make more time for isolation work. You know, if you just want to improve balance and coordination, you can focus on training these compound movements with control through a full range of motion. You scale it to however it is, whatever it is that is specific, and you find the way to measure it in terms of total sessions and output. And then you'll also get, if you follow this kind of breakdown, you'll also get a very high quality aerobic base from these walks and from these warmups. And then after I'd say six to 12 months, if you're doing this, you should be fairly conditioned in much better shape with more muscularity, with better fitness, and with a

little bit of a routine. And that will give you a jumping off point. Okay, this question comes from Brianna Rochelle. We won't spend as much time on the following questions. These are more sub topics, but her question is, I'm fatiguing quickly, especially during leg day. How do I get over this? So if fatigue is due to a lack of nutrient availability, I might recommend eating a larger pre-workout meal or supplementing with electrolytes or even carbohydrate during training. Let's say you just don't have the get up and go. This can be where you use stimulants prior to training. Caffeine is a very common one people use to excite the nervous system and get ready. You can use songs and music to get the same effect, but more likely than not, your fatigue is just some form of your psychology

or your physiology telling you, I don't have what I need to perform. And the easiest way to have what you need to perform is to get water into the system, especially if these are longer training systems or training sessions. And then if you are still finding that you are flat, you need to consider fuel. If you're still finding that you are flat, you need to consider sleep, stimulants, et cetera. It also could very well be that you're just doing too much leg training. It's not uncommon for me to see women trying to get away with 15, 20, 25, 30 sets of legs, um, you know, zero warmup sets all to failure, like four days a week. And I'm like, yo, that's a lot of leg training. Like for elite physique, the program I do for

women's bodybuilding on the app, that's like 15 to 20 sets of total leg volume. Maybe twice a week, we touch that number across two training sessions that are spread pretty far apart. And then a lot of people like frequency, but I know chicks who do that much leg volume in like one session. And while I do believe women can be pretty fatigue resistant and a good volume program is important for building muscle, you just have to make sure that you're not doing too much. Also from Brianna Rachel, two really good questions. This one is how often do you get blood work done? I'd like to get my blood work done every six to 12 months. And I use a company called Bloke's. I've also used a company called Merrick Health. Both are very

good, different experiences. Merrick is based out of Canada. Bloke's is based out of the US. I might be wrong about Merrick now that I think about it, but I think if you need pharmaceutical intervention after your labs, where they're located might matter to you. But let's say you just want the blood work. I like that both of these companies offer a fully comprehensive panel. And what I really like about Blokes is Blokes has a super, super cool PDF that kind of displays everything. And if you're not a nerd like me who can read labs, you're going to want that big time. With both, you get to meet a physician, which is very cool. And then one thing I've really liked about Blokes, who has a female sister company, Joy, whose labs focus more on women, they will actually tailor a vitamin protocol to any deficiencies that you may

have and ship it right to you. Most lab and blood work companies are also going to be in the business of offering compound pharmacy, meaning like they will be able to compound medication for you that you may or may not need on the basis of what labs reveal. Now, for those of you who are like, look, I just want to know what's going on internally. You can go to your doctor and ask for a full blood panel, a full lipid panel, a full thyroid panel, a full white blood cell panel, a full red blood cell panel, a full sex hormone panel. Give me everything you can give me that my insurance will cover. panel, give me everything you can give me that my insurance will cover. That can be sometimes tricky. Um, and I, you know, I don't expect anybody to be like, yo, I'm super scientifically literate. So I know exactly what to ask for. Um, I think that can be a little bit daunting to try

to learn all these things. So, you know, I guess, I guess I can just give you some things that you could maybe go in and ask about. Um, so like blood glucose, really, really big one, something you're definitely going to want to pay attention to. Um, some primary markers that you're going to want to think about are hemoglobin A1C, fasting glucose, fasting insulin. Uh, Your kidneys are a pretty important system. Blood urea, nitrogen, and creatinine, those are things I like to look at. They typically skew high for people who eat high protein. You might be interested in prostate antigen if you're a male. That's one that I pay attention to and I want on all my labs. You can also make sure that you're getting your liver and gallbladder looked at. ALT, AST, bilirubin are very common things that people will ask for. Same thing with

iron, serum iron, and ferritin to monitor your iron. Of course, your lipid panel is important. You should get at least cholesterol, triglycerides, HDL, and LDL. If you're lucky, you'll get subparticles of LDL, like VLDL and chylomicron. It's important to examine as many of the lipids as possible to get a full spectrum going. Thyroid, typically you want TSH, free T3, free T4, T3 uptake, etc. I say etc. like you're going to know the rest of them. Those are the main ones. Okay. Vitamin D, another big one. And then for dudes, typically you're going to want to look at DHEA, luteinizing hormone, total test, free test, which is really important. SHBG or sex hormone binding globulin, estradiol. Those are kind of the big ones. And then you can look at

some stuff for red blood cells, for white blood cells, et cetera. Um, but that's really what I like to get in my club, uh, blood work from Anna Boulay, 2012. The question is what is the best dumbbell quad exercise? So I'm a big fan of goblet squats, um, walking lunges, Bulgarian split squats. Those are the three best exercises that you can do with a dumbbell or load easily with a dumbbell that will really hit your quads hard. Uh, one of one, two, one, five. I'm working out. Oh, okay. Question working out four to five days a week versus six, which do you prefer? Actually like both. Um, but with everything I have going on with the wedding, getting married in, uh, like 40 days, um, you know, I'm doing some traveling. I'm going to spend almost a month.

No. Yeah. Almost a month out of my house. Uh, like within a month of getting married between trips to Mexico, Hawaii, Vegas for speaking engagements and travel. Um, and like just having the business, having the dogs, having the priorities I have like six days a week would be cool, but I can't really recover from it anymore and just spread a little too thin. So usually it's five. Um, sometimes it's four, like a couple weeks a year. It might be six. Like, I'll give you an example. I'm going to train. I pulled a muscle in my back, helping my dad in and out of his wheelchair the other day, which is rare. And it's a great example of how like you're the most vulnerable when you do things

you don't do as often. Like I can row way more than what my dad weighs. But I, when I helped him move in an awkward position in a tiny tissue wasn't prepared and a lack of resilience, I had a small strain. So I've been deloading, but I'm going to be in Mexico in a couple of weeks with my best friends. I know these dudes love to lift. They'll want to lift every day. So that's four days in a row right there. And I'll probably lift weights the day before we leave. That's five right there. And if I know myself, I'll probably want to train hard before we leave. That's five right there. And if I know myself, I'll probably want to train hard before we leave. So I could end up stringing like six, seven, eight, nine, 10 lifts in a row, but that is so rare. So typically it's four to five. Last question from Rebecca Arnold, US, do you think breastfeeding or hormones make it hard to lose fat slash weight? The peri-pregnancy window and the hormones associated with pregnancy

can make fat loss very challenging. Same thing with the post-pregnancy hormonal shifts that we see. The important thing to remember about breastfeeding is it does take calories to produce milk and milk production and milk supply tends to be something that is very important to mothers. So pressuring yourself to lose weight and forcing a deficit might place your milk supply in jeopardy. So I would recommend getting on a clear track with your physician about your breastfeeding plan, the duration, and making sure that you have adequate food supply. You'll find that making milk burns calories. So if you do not wildly over consume, you may very well end up losing weight as you breastfeed, but every woman's different. Every physiology is different and

hormones that adjust or shift like estradiol, estrogen, progesterone, aldosterone. Um, I'm thinking about things like insulin. These things all fluctuate quite a bit. So you keep an eye on those things, you monitor them. This is why lab work can be important, but all of them have influence on appetite, on mood, on subjective experience of exercise. So they indirectly influence your weight, but regardless of where you are, weight loss, fat loss comes down to total daily energy expenditure, caloric intake, and not a whole lot else at the macro level. Those things do influence it. But I would encourage you to focus more on your post-pregnancy health and vitality than I would weight loss. But that is just my opinion.

Thanks so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed the episode. If you did, do me a favor, share it to your Instagram story, tag me. Uh, so I can say, thank you. I always share them. Uh, and do me a favor as well. Leave me a five-star rating and review on Apple and Spotify that helps this show rise in search rankings and will help me reach more people and help as many people as I reasonably can get in shape. Thanks so much for tuning in.

I'll catch you on the next one.