Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 390: The 5 Best Exercises for Gains + Smith Machines, Slow Progress, Senior Fitness + More-

Episode Date: October 23, 2024

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Hey everybody, welcome into another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue Podcast. As always, I'm your host Danny Matrenga and in this episode, I'm talking about my five favorite exercises for putting on muscle. I'll add a sixth bonus exercise just to try to help you guys really pack on as much muscle as possible. And I'll talk about why I love these. I'm also going to give you my one kind of two cent opinion on squat rack for Smith machine. We'll talk a lot about rate of progress,

how to know when it's okay to back off, as well as how I would train a geriatric adult or 70 year old or older person, tips for dealing with hunger on a cut, and what type of exercise I recommend for people with joint pain or arthritis. 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 in 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.

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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. Hey everybody, welcome in to another episode. In this one we're chatting my five favorite exercises for building muscle, why I think they're so good for building muscle. I'm going to use these five to try to complete theoretically a whole body muscle development program and these exercises, not just the mental exercise of picking them and working through them, are pretty versatile and many of you will be able to do them. Also going to be diving into some of your questions. Most of these are fielded from over on my Instagram. I throw up a question box a couple times a month where you can ask me questions,

but you can also keep up with me on Twitter or X on threads, on YouTube. I try to engage, Oh, and tick talk, which I don't really like. I try to keep up with as many of the questions as I possibly can, but unlike a lot of online fitness personalities, I actually have a gym. I have more that takes place, uh, behind the scenes than just making fitness content, which is actually so fabulous. Um, but I just wanted you to, you know, be able to reach me and ask the questions

that help you get in shape. And these questions are actually pretty cool. We have home gym questions. We have questions about rate of progress and dealing with injuries, questions about training geriatrics and what to do to get started as a senior, or that'll be great for anyone who works with seniors

Who has an older parent? we're talking about dealing with hunger and navigating hunger while dieting and trying to lose body fat as Well as the best exercises for people who have joint pain not just arthritis But like pain specifically in their joints and what it is that you can do to make it better Okay, let's get into the first chunk of the episode here pain specifically in their joints and what it is that you can do to make it better. Okay, let's get into the first chunk of the episode here. I want to talk about exercises that will help you develop muscle like my five favorites. If somebody came to me and said, Danny, I can only do five exercises.

Let me rephrase it. I'm at the gym and into the gym walks an alien from a completely different universe and he says, Danny, my species has a brain that can only compartmentalize things in little baskets of five. And we, we only know five colors, five numbers, whatever somehow they know more than five words and I need to develop muscle for my alien race because we are attempting to build something and we are all extremely weak.

It is a strange feature of our alien race. We have tremendous physical weakness and a brain that can only remember five things per any arbitrary category. I need you to show me the five best exercises for putting on muscle that I can take back to my home planet. I would say to this alien, okay, thank you very much for coming in. Can you please fill out the waiver just in case? And I'll show you the five exercises that I think would be best for building muscle, assuming you can only do these five and only remember these five. Of course, for you guys, it's not going to...

This is not a real scenario, but it will help conceptually. So the first one I would choose, and all of these have a lot of bang for your buck, is the Romanian deadlift. And the reason bang for your buck is the Romanian deadlift. And the reason I'm going to choose the Romanian deadlift is because it trains the glutes and the hamstrings in the lengthened position, which is amazing for building muscle. But I'll go a step further. It challenges the hell out of your core, your upper back, your lats, and even, even a little bit in the low back, yes. And while there isn't much muscle to build in the low back, it's

certainly good to have a strong resilient back. And I think you would have killer glute gains and killer hamstring gains from progressing this, as well as building tremendous hypertrophy in the spinal erectors, the upper back, the core, and just getting flat out strong. So that is one that makes this list no matter what. Now, you can do it with a barbell, you could do it with a dumbbell, you could do it single leg, although probably expect less gains, you'd even do it bee stance. But if this alien race could only choose one variation, I would have it be the RDL with a barbell The second I went back and forth on over and over and over and over and over and over again

It's going to be a squat pattern because I need to get into the quads and due to the general size of the glutes I like to crush glutes because they're so important and you need them to be very strong, to age with functionality, with dignity, and with capability. It's generally not going to be easy to just hit your glutes with like a million billion sets of RDLs because a lot of times, I think what you'll find is you do start to get a little bit of fatigue in the low back. So for that reason, I am going to pick, and this is actually like a in the moment pick, I'm going to pick Bulgarian split squats, just edging out split squads. And the reason I'm doing, or I'm sorry, just edging out regular squads and the reason I'm do I'm sorry just edging out regular squads, hack squads, any type of squads.

That being said, the reason I'm picking the Bulgarian split squad is because I think it pairs well with the RDL and I'm sensitive to the the you know strain that's going to be placed on my alien compadres as they you know endeavor into this workout journey. It's really important to me that this, you know, race of aliens has unilateral strength, not just bilateral strength, and this is kind of the only unilateral exercise to, but the reason I love the Bulgarian split squat, we get big time

bend in the hip, big time bend in the knee, great stretch. You can add things to stabilize like sticks or only holding one dumbbell, but deep squats are always on my muscle building list. They build tremendous hypertrophy in the glutes and the quads and the adductors and split squats will allow you to do that while developing unilateral strength, which is strength on one side of the body But you could totally swap this for a deep barbell squat or a hack squat Okay, the third is the pulling movement for the back for the biceps for the lats for the traps And I went back and forth over and over and over and over and over again with a little bit of difficulty in

Trying to figure out you know, which what exactly it was over and over and over again with a little bit of difficulty in trying to figure out, you know, which what exactly it was that I wanted to pick here. And I ended up going with the chest supported row. Why? One, you get a huge stretch. Two, you can really load it up. Three, it's stable. Four, it's self-explanatory. You could throw any alien on a chest-supported row and say, okay, reach down there and pull that thing up to your chest and repeat until your back's burning

or your biceps are burning or hopefully both. And that's probably the one I would choose because it's gonna allow you to build your upper back, get really strong in your arms, and all that's really, really valuable. Especially when you're looking to build a well-rounded physique, you got to prioritize that posterior chain just a little bit because you can't see it. And you

can always see the stuff in the front of your body. So it really helps to keep that in mind. All right. Number four, my personal favorite, chest presses. A lot of people call this bench pressing. I always call it chest pressing because sometimes I do chest presses on a machine. Sometimes I do chest presses on cables. So it's not always with a bench on my back or a lot of times it's inclined and I think when a lot of people hear bench they just think flat barbell bench which is my choice weirdly enough. I think getting really strong on barbell bench builds the fuck out of your chest and your shoulders and your triceps, and I've always had really well developed pecs because I used to love benching early

in my training career and worked up to a really heavy bench relative to body weight. So I'm abundantly aware that pressing with dumbbells is generally easier, especially as somebody who trains a lot of first time lifters at my gym and works with the general population. I'm just abundantly aware, right, of how it is to put the average person under a barbell. But assuming these aliens can learn the form, a barbell bench press will allow you to build quite a bit of strength because it's really stable. You get a little bit of a unilateral effect out of that dumbbell press and a converging

arm machine plate loaded press is also badass. So while I will commit and concede to my favorite being the dumbbell press or the barbell bench press, my apologies. It's with very tight contention. And so all full range motion chest pressing, whether it's flat or gently inclined is amazing. And I would absolutely have that be number four on the list. Now for the fifth one, and this is again a general rule of thumb, I want to develop the delts.

I think they make a really big difference in the physique. And I think the best exercise for doing that is an overhead press because we get additional triceps and because we get some additional chest and even traps. Now a lot of people can't overhead press and I don't know how good I feel about these aliens just on their own ripping on an overhead press. So I started thinking about an overhead work that many more people can do and I ended up going with a lat pull down because it's not going to hit your delts much at all and I'll trust that we can get a lot of that from the bench, but it

is going to give us a little extra posterior chain. So for that fifth one, you know, I'm going to tell these aliens. I know you can only learn five exercises. So this almost defeats my hypothetical, but one of them should be overhead, either pulling down or pushing up. And I think that's true for you. 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. So if you've listened through to this exercise, you know we've zoned in on one hinge, one deep squat or lunge, one horizontal pull with a chest support for optimal stability, one full range of motion press, and ideally some type of overhead press and pull. That is the best hypertrophy program you can do because all of those exercises allow you to apply the theory of progression, progressive overload, like actually getting stronger on these is easier because they're compounds. They allow you to employ the new theories of like stretch mediated hypertrophy because most of these challenge your muscles and

lengthen positions, which is great for growth. They have big range of motions, which is great for growth. And they're all throughout the programming we do in our studio that we do for our app clients and that we do for our one on one online clients because they frickin work. So these are, in my opinion, the five or six best bedrock staple exercises for a hypertrophy program, and I'm super open to changing them. And again, you have to take the variations into account guys, the alternatives, the options and the swaps, because there are a lot of people for whom my very initial prescription, the RDL, they're like,

oh, I can't do that. There's my back. Well, we got a pivot. Okay, looking through some notes here, we have a filament with our first question of the day. It is is slow progress okay? If it means preserving form and dealing with injuries, I would say yes, slow progress is always okay. In fact, it's important to remember that slow progress is so progress and the key to progress is not delaying progress, small progress, itty bitty progress, lowercase P progress. I love that it's all good. We want to keep the ball moving. It doesn't have we, you know, we need to move down the field and in

football. You know you run the ball sometimes and you pick up three yards, five yards, ten yards, but you get tackled and you run it again and maybe you'll use a yard or you try to throw it and it gets incomplete and a big thing in football is you never want to go backwards, but it's okay to move forward with these small runs three yards, five yards, three yards, and then all of a sudden play action pass. You pretend to run it and boom, you hit the big pass and at 40 yards, 50 yards touchdown. And I find life's kind of like that. It's a lot of fucking running plays in a row and you're going to wonder like, man,

am I really making progress? Two yards, one yard, two yards, three yards. And yes, in football, the concept of the fourth down have to get 10 yards at least in four tries. So you have to put some effort and you have to get some progress. But you know what? If you move the ball down the field a little bit every day, like any high school football coach would tell you,

three yards in a cloud of dust will work. Because if all you do is get three yards every play, you'll get a first down every four plays. and you'll march all the way down that field. And a lot of us are choosing goals in life that are slow builds and they're slow rolls and we just have to be okay with that. And so I think especially in this context where you're preserving form because of personal preference and technique and likely because you're dealing with injuries, you can expect to pre-rest on weight a little slower and that is totally okay. Okay. From Sterling Soler,

the question is squat rack or Smith machine for a home gym. Love this question. I am super biased though. I am going to say squat rack and I'm going to give a totally unsponsored unbiased shout out to Titan fitness. I'm gonna give a totally unsponsored, unbiased shout out to Titan Fitness. I bought the Titan Fitness low profile wall mounted rack from my garage for 200 fucking dollars. And I mounted that shit into my studs and into the ground.

And on this fucking $200 solid steel laser cut rack, this is very high quality and you really can't even tell now this $200 solid steel laser cut rack. I can do pull ups, overhead press, reverse lunges, RDL, squats, bench, inverted rows, no problem all out of one rack. A Smith machine is an awesome machine, especially for things like hip thrusts. I love certain Smith machines for incline bench, but nine times out of 10, if I'm working with a barbell, I need it to be a free barbell.

And for the versatility I get out of this rack, for the $200 I paid for it, I would say, get that Titan low profile rack, put it on a wall, get the 12 inch crossbars so it comes out as minimally as possible and rock the shit out of that squat rack. Enjoy it and then save up to get a really good Smith machine. But just know that the 200 bucks you spent on that rack you're probably getting more bang for your fucking buck then you will out of a $15,000 $12,000 $10,000 or $8,000 Smith machine depending on who makes it. Squat racks have so much versatility because of frankly the most

disqualifying feature of a Smith machine is its only feature. It's on a guided rack, which in a few contexts is better, but in most contexts, it's just not. And that doesn't mean you can't crush it on a Smith. You usually can, especially if you know what you're training or you're picking a couple exercises that are really good on the Smith, but I would go squat rack all the way. All right, Daniel E Reynolds exercises for my 70 year old dad. Let's go back to the six exercises I mentioned earlier. And those are great for preserving muscle, training through full ranges of motion, developing strength, muscle, resiliency, all the shit that we're focused on. I would just modify them to make them accessible for a 70 year

old. So instead of a barbell RDL, I would have them work on a kettlebell deadlift, very light, very relaxing. I would want like focus on form and technique and not maxing out and doing like sets of eight to 10 so they can just work on the mechanic of picking something from the floor up and down, right? Like a legitimate, very simple, very easy deadlift. Instead of doing a deep squat or a lunge, I'd probably do something like a leg press or a box squat to start so that they don't bottom out and they can just work on feeling the squat and going slow, but it's still a squat pattern. I could still have them

do a chest supported row, although I might have them do a cable row, a one-arm dumbbell row, or a TRX row. Notice we're following the same pattern. We're just scaling it to the fitness, likely fitness capabilities of a 70-year-old man. We're also going to definitely want to do some chest pressing, although I would probably do an incline dumbbell press or a machine press. And I would almost always add a lat pull down, or it tends to be the case that older adults have poor overhead mobility for pressing, but for pulling it's quite good. I'd probably toss the overhead press, and if I wanted to train their shoulders, I'd probably do something like a lateral raise. Something

else I do a lot for older clients is bicep tricep forearm training to develop their grip and The strength of their wrists because wrists fractures are really common and a lot of glute work and a lot of sled pushing Sled pushing I find helps adults develop strength gait mechanics and really get into deep hip flexion and glute work And I have all the seniors that see me at the studio do it. Okay, Step Michelle asks, steps for dealing with hunger on a cut. Oof. Well, the good news is if you're hungry on a cut, it's probably working.

And the bad news is there's only a few things you can do to navigate the hunger. I mean, frankly, the whole reason that Ozempic is the top drug on the planet right now is because it really makes you less hungry. Like way less hungry. And that's the number one reason people quit their diet because they're too damn hungry.

What really helps is loading up on fiber and water and spacing your meals out and doing things that help to manage or have a positive effect on reducing appetite like going on walks chewing your food Not rushing through meals or eating distracted taking your time the little shit Like that's really the only thing you can do to take a dent or make a dent in hunger You really have to commit wholeheartedly

to focused, attentional, you know, thoughtful eating, mindful eating and putting the right stuff in your meals and around your meals. The other thing you could always try to do is add things like diet products or low calorie products or zero calorie products or things like these 30 calorie popsicles I eat that are like you know four inches long and gone in five seconds but they quote-unquote do the trick. Those can satisfy cravings but if it's hunger mindful eating is usually my go-to. Okay last question is Kristen Weitz who asks best exercises for people with joint pain. So

I'll speak generally and not specific because if it's one joint specifically, I might give a bad answer. But if you just generally have joint pain or maybe you have arthritis, I would actually still really recommend looking into resistance training. Well, I do think things like swimming and walking are amazing for people with just chronic joint pain or arthritis. I love weightlifting in ranges of motion that are comfortable for the joints. It tends to build tremendous resilience. It's been shown in study after study to reduce pain sensitivity, especially reduce symptoms of arthritis. It's just picking exercises that don't cause pain or strengthening muscles around joints that are in pain with exercises that don't enhance or add to pain. It sounds like I'm making it simple, and I know it might sound a little reductionist, but a combination of low intensity aerobic training,

like walking or swimming with a little bit of weights to build strength and stability around your joints will really help with pain. All right, folks, I hope you enjoyed the episode. If you did hit follow on Apple podcasts, subscribe over on Spotify, leave me a five star rating and review on both. It helps a ton and share this. I'm trying to grow the podcast. I'm trying to reach a download threshold. I'm getting very, very close and every little bit helps.

So thank you all so much for tuning in and I'll catch you on the next one.