Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 62 - Q&A + New Program News!

Episode Date: August 18, 2020

In this episode, Danny answers some of your questions! He also gives an update on his life and a project that he has been putting his time into!---Thanks For Listening!---RESOURCES/COACHING:I am all about education and that is not limited to this podcast! Feel free to grab a FREE guide (Nutrition, Training, Macros, Etc!) HERE!Interested in Working With Coach Danny and His One-On-One Coaching Team? Click HERE!Want To Have YOUR Question Answered On an Upcoming Episode of DYNAMIC DIALOGUE? You Can Submit It HERE!Want to Support The Podcast AND Get in Better Shape? Grab a Program HERE!----SOCIAL LINKS:Follow Coach Danny on INSTAGRAMFollow Coach Danny on TwitterFollow Coach Danny on FacebookGet More In-Depth Articles Written By Yours’ Truly HERE!-----TIMESTAMPS:PROGRAMS COMING!!! 1:09“How do you keep up with nutrition when traveling for work?” 3:29“I eat 2300 calories a day, but not losing body fat. Should I increase calories to gain muscle or cut to lose fat?” 10:48“Best exercises to do with kettlebells?” 15:20“Thoughts on drinking breast milk for gains?” 18:55“Losing body fat but arms are getting bigger, should I switch to lower weight and higher rep range?” 21:50“My deadlifts are lagging behind my other lifts. Tips to improve?”  22:52Support the Show.

to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. I am your host, Danny Matrenga, and I'm actually recording today on Monday. Typically, I drop episodes of this podcast every Monday and every Friday, and that's a cadence that you can, in fact, get used to. I know this week is a little bit different. By the time you're hearing this, it will probably be at least Tuesday, and that's because where I live in California, there were some rolling power outages. It's something that PG&E has been doing in an effort to mitigate some of the damage related to like electrically caused wildfires up here in California. That's kind of become a huge problem in the state, and PG&E has been on the hook for quite a bit of it. That's neither here nor there, but they shut down my power, so I couldn't record this episode

and get it out to you in a timely manner. But here we are. If you're listening to this on Tuesday, you're awesome. Thank you for being on top of things. But today's episode is a Q&A. I'm going to answer some of your questions related to a heck of a lot of different topics. There's all kinds of interesting questions in today's Q&A. But before we get into that, I kind of wanted to let you guys in on what I have been up to lately. Many of you have asked, I have in fact been working on a new program that will be going live on the website in just a few weeks. This is a power building program. Now, the programs that live on the website in just a few weeks. This is a power building program. Now, the programs that are on the website right now are a female physique program,

which is effectively a bodybuilding style protocol that both men and women could follow, but it does prioritize volume and kind of progression towards the glutes, hamstrings, and upper back, which are muscle groups that are quite popular for the development of a more athletic-looking female physique, hence the name female physique. My other program, Foundations, which is a stability, strength, and aerobic-based program, kind of an effectively what I would call a decent spin on CrossFit, something that contains a high amount of strength work paired with what I believe to be intelligently selected mobility, stability, and endurance work that will hopefully allow you to perform at your best and with greater work capacity at the end of the program. you're a dude. But power build is primarily going to be a hybrid program that has three blocks, a strength block, a power block, and a hypertrophy block. Each block is four weeks.

And the overall goal here is to help a lifter who hasn't quite decided whether they're all in on strength or they're all in on hypertrophy. Maybe they want to get a little bit of both. Maybe they're like, hey, I'm not really a bodybuilder, but I'm not a powerlifter either. But I sure like being both big and strong. That's exactly what this program is going to do. And so I want you specifically here on the podcast to stay tuned because you will be getting special access to this program as well as everybody who's on the mailing list before the general public. So that is coming down the pipeline very soon. That's taken up quite a bit of my time.

The program is already 70 pages long, and I'm really looking forward to sharing it with you guys. In regards to today's Q&A, why don't we kick things off with a question that I've actually worked quite a bit one-on-one with clients. So I've got a lot of both personal as well as professional perspective for this. And this is from at flower mouth over on Instagram. And she asks, how do you keep up with nutrition when traveling for work? And this is a great question. And I think it really comes down to the extent of your travel, right? If you're just traveling around town, you can pack a lunch, but if you're traveling across states and you're traveling for extended periods of time, that's

where things can get quite a bit difficult. But here's what I'll share with you from my coaching experience and personal experience, what's worked well. I have trained a lot of people who travel for extended periods of time away from their home for work. And of course, the big benefit of being at home is we have complete control over the food we have access to. We're not far from our own bed, probably our gym. And quite frankly, we have a lot more control. When we're traveling, it's oftentimes quite difficult to get in workouts. If we're traveling for work, there's often heightened stress. Perhaps we're around a lot of other people. Perhaps there's a lot of systemic stressors or extra time spent communicating with spouses

because we're not home. All kinds of stuff can pop up, which makes it not just harder to train, but also quite a bit harder to stay on track with nutrition. Many people who travel for work due to all of the systemic stress have a hard time just keeping their head above water. So making smart nutritional decisions in my opinion and in my practice and from what I've seen has to actually be done a little bit in advance. Knowing that traveling for work is often hectic is a good thing if you think ahead.

If you know where you're going, one of the things I've done with great success and I've done for and with a lot of my clients is actually pre-selecting some of the locations around where you'll be staying where you can go for a quick lunch or a quick dinner. Maybe even surveying for some of my clients who are out of town for sometimes a couple weeks at a time, surveying the surrounding radius and seeing if you could find a healthy grocery store. Calling ahead and asking the hotel if they have a fridge if they do have a fridge it's never a bad idea to bring a few of your staple snacks back home or back to the hotel room i should say things like greek yogurt are awesome protein bars i often have clients grab fruit

and veggies things they can snack on in between trips to and from their room maybe it's meetings maybe it's sales related who knows whatever they traveling for, a lot of times it's not for leisure, right? If it's for leisure, I would say, hey, do whatever the hell you want. But this question was specifically about traveling for work. So identifying some restaurants in advance and maybe procuring a place to keep some food is always a really good idea. Something else I like to do, and I'm actually working on this exact thing with a client right now. I got off the phone with him about, well, not off the phone. We were having a text exchange just a couple hours ago.

But he's out of town in Texas, and he's in the middle of a cut. And one of the things he's looking forward to on his trip is enjoying food. And I was like, well, man, that's going to be tough. So what we're trying is we're deploying a protein sparing modified fast plus. And so what this is, is it's a form of intermittent fasting, but a protein sparing modified fast allows you to have protein. So this is a really good idea for people who want to mitigate any muscle loss, or they just want to maximize that protein retention so that they stay full so that they stay satiated as they work their way across the day. They're not so concerned about getting the full, maybe cellular benefits

from a fast, like those cellular rejuvenating benefits. People always talk about the healthy benefits of a fast, the insulin regulating benefits of a fast. They might just want to fast purely from the caloric restriction standpoint so they can enjoy a big Texas barbecue dinner. So the rule with him and I is what I want you to do is only have protein and veggies for your first two meals. You can have protein, fruits, veggies. That's it. I don't care what they are, but those are the things you can have. Then when you get to dinner, don't even bother counting calories. I'll assume that you'll have been full and at a relatively low intake for most of the day so you can enjoy yourself.

And if you go a little bit over, no big deal, man, but we can really really limit the damage here so this is often a trick i'll deploy with clients who travel for work if they're going to be traveling with co-workers if they're going to be having access or going to be encouraged i should say to go out and be social which is quite common skipping breakfast and maybe even just having something like a protein shake at lunch can really afford you the ability to go out, have a good time, enjoy yourself without making any restrictions because co-workers can be quite difficult sometimes with regards to the, hey, you should just try this type of thing. That can be very common for those of us who maybe aren't working in the fitness space. So next question coming up is from at Sid Nunez, and she asks, what is my favorite pre-workout meal or snack?

So I like my pre- and post-workout meals if I am taking the time to really plan them out, which I don't always do, to have two different types of carbohydrate and some protein. And so here's what I typically go for. I will often look to something that is grain-based. I often aim for things like cereal, oatmeal, bread, all things that I like, and then something that is fruit-based, so any fruit that I quite like.

And many of those things pair well, like cereal and fruit tends to pair well. So does oatmeal and fruit. But the thing we're trying to capture with having two different carbohydrate sources is maximizing our utilization of the different glucose transporters and fructose transporters. So we can get more carbohydrate in more quickly if we have perhaps carbohydrate that is slightly fructose biased or maybe it's pure glucose maybe we have a little bit of lactose in there long story short different carbohydrates have different digestion rates and i want to make sure that i have something throughout my entire workout available to me so i like carbohydrates that i digest at slightly different rates um not anything super fibrous that's going to slow it

down a lot. So I'll typically, I won't do anything more fibrous than say like a sweet potato. And even that might have too much fiber for my liking. So I, like I said, I'll often opt for grains. I really like rices, cereals, bread is often an option for me, and then something fruit-based. And then a little bit of protein alongside that is always nice. And I like to have that about 90 minutes prior to the window in which I'm training so that that food can get into the stomach, start digestion. It's not sitting heavy, right? I'm not sitting with the weight of a full meal in my stomach.

This stuff has hopefully been chewed, partially digested. All of those things are important to me. If I'm training in the morning and I don't have an appetite, food for me tends to sit a little what I would call heavy. I'll actually train fasted. That's how much I dislike training with that feeling of having too much food in your stomach. We're all familiar with it, but I really, really dislike it. Like I said, just to reiterate, two different types of carbohydrate if you can, none of them being too complex. I like

to keep my fat low. And then some protein, a shake is a fine option here if you're looking for something quick and you want to combine all of these things. You could make a little smoothie with a couple different types of fruit in it and maybe throw in like some yogurt and you're probably doing just fine. Okay, so next question. This question is from at Kirk Simpson and he says mountain I'm a Mikey a mountain biking mountain. I'm a mountain biking athlete. I eat 2300 calories a day and I'm not losing body fat as I expected. Increase calories and build muscle or decrease calories. So I'm looking at the thumbnail here and at Kirk Simpson, man, you're pretty big. You're pretty jacked based on your thumbnail. And if you're mountain biking

and doing enough resistance training to obtain maintain the physique that you have right now i would say something's going on if you're not losing body fat at 2300 calories because you look like a pretty big dude and 2300 calories is probably at or very close to a deficit for you have a hard time imagining it's not and if you're lifting a couple times a week and mountain biking quite a lot, I bet your activity is really, really high. And so one of the things, if let's just say hypothetically, I was your coach and you came to me and you said, hey, I want to work with you on this. What do I do? I might say, you know, man, I have a harder time believing that you're eating a little bit more and maybe making some mistakes with your tracking. I have a lot harder time believing you're not losing fat at 2300 calories than I believe have a harder time believing that you might be overeating.

And so it's just so common that our tracking is incorrect or we're making small, just tiny eensy weensy mistakes that add up across a week. And we end up eating a little bit more than we think. Because when I take a look at somebody's thumbnail, they look jacked, they tell me they're mountain biking, and they're a dude, and they're only eating 2,300 calories, you would definitely assume that this person is really metabolically messed up, right? Like, you'd go, damn, like, you must have such bad metabolic adaptation

if you can't lose weight at this intake with the amount of activity that you're doing. But in reality, it's probably much more likely that there's a tracking error. So I just always bring that up first because tracking errors are incredibly common. We all do them. I've been tracking forever, and I do them. They happen. But the question on the back half of this is, Sergei, increase my calories to build muscle,

which theoretically means increased metabolism, or decrease my calories so that he can attempt to lose fat, continue to lose fat below this supposed 2300 calorie line. And so I think that the answer to me conventionally would be like, man, if you're doing all of this activity, I honestly wouldn't be focusing on losing a ton of body fat in the first place. I might be focused on just performing at a high level because mountain biking is hard. But if you want to lose fat, you know, we have to sadly we have to bring these calories down. Like, I don't think I'm going to bump your calories up and some metabolic resets going to happen. It doesn't always work like that. But if you have become metabolically adapted, which, again, is much less likely than the fact that you are just simply not tracking

perfectly and you're overeating and 2300 calories isn in fact, where you're at. You know, one of the things we would have to look at is say, hey, did all that activity paired with a low calorie intake cause some metabolic adaptation? Do we need a return to maintenance to offset, mitigate, or hopefully bring us back a little bit more quickly? And you might have to. I don't know how much muscle you're going to build, which is why I'm a little bit kind of scrupulous about this,

but I would say that, you know, you might need to go back up so that you can kind of reap the benefits of a potentially more robust metabolism. I'm not going to say non damaged. I'm very careful with my language there. I think it's important. But yeah, man, you know, like if you came to me, I would definitely want to check your calories first. That's what I want to reiterate. And then again, if they're rock solid and you're not losing and you're as jacked as you are and as active as you are, I might say, hey, let's let's back off. Let's help the cows. Let's build some muscle. You know, I know that you want to lose a little bit more body fat, but, you know, we can put a pause on that for a while. Like we can,

we can at least maintain your current body fat level while we give you a little bit more fuel and extend this out so that you can just absolutely crush your bike rides and enjoy your training. Because I do think that is important. So next question is from at bear and she asks, I have one 20 pound kettlebell, which is moderately heavy for me. Best exercises to do. So kettlebells are incredible tools and they're a little bit intimidating for novice gym goers, particularly some of the more advanced moves I'm going to talk about. But I am certainly no master of the kettlebell, although I do consider myself to be quite a bit more familiar with it than most trainers. Some of the kettlebell, although I do consider myself to be quite a bit more familiar

with it than most trainers, some of the best movements are the movements that were designed around a kettlebell. I'll get to ones you might be more familiar with in conventional training in a second, but if all you have is one kettlebell, I want to give the kettlebell its due diligence here. I want to give it the credit it's worth. Before I get into telling you all the exercises you know how to do with other tools, let me tell you some awesome exercises you can do with just the kettlebell. So the first is called a Turkish get up. It's an incredible exercise. I consider it to be one that elevates work capacity. It does amazing things for the shoulder. I talked about that with actually a Joe Grinstein of Hyperthrive Athletics, a big baseball gym out in

Sacramento. Joe and his brothers kill it. And one of the things they have a lot of their athletes do is kettlebell work, specifically the Turkish getup, because of how amazing it is for the stability and promoting the health of the shoulder. So the Turkish getup is a must-do. Work capacity, health of the shoulder, it's incredible for the core. Every rep has a lunge built into it. It's pretty awesome. You also get quite a bit of hip extension. It's cool. It's a great movement. Then we have the kettlebell swing, the movement that probably all of us are most familiar with. Again, amazing for work capacity. It can be an incredible conditioning tool. It's tremendous

for building the glutes and hamstrings, as well as developing strength through the core, increasing your ability to pocket and kind of contract through the core as you hold a breath and then grab another breath in sequence with multiple swings that you extend over one to two minutes. You can do this for time. Another amazing exercise that you can do with the kettlebell is anything in the front rack position. So that's a particular position when we talk about working with the kettlebell is anything in the front rack position. So that's a particular position when we talk about working with the kettlebell, where it's up against the

torso, against the palm, we're making points of contact so that it's tight to our body. And we can do things like reverse lunges and squats, and even presses from this front rack position. And so I would say first and foremost, become very comfortable with using that kettlebell to do a get up with using that kettlebell to do a swing with using that kettlebell to do exercise out of the front rack position, then we can use the kettlebell to load some of my other favorite exercises like a one arm row, I find a one arm row or warriors row is amazing with the kettlebell. I really like floor presses with a kettlebell. I think that works great.

I really like doing deficit push-ups with one hand elevated on a kettlebell. I'm a huge fan of that. I like kettlebell front squats. I like kettlebell goblet squats. I like kettlebell sumo squats. You can even do kettlebell single-leg hip thrusts. There's a million movements that come to mind. But those are conventional movements that we'd often do with other implements.

I would encourage, if that's the tool you have, to do those things. But don't neglect some of the amazing work you can do with just the kettlebell. Like, really, really, really, it makes a big, big difference to your training quality when you work in new stuff. And if you've been stuck in quarantine like I have, you know, adding in a new tool like a kettlebell and becoming really competent with a few new movements could be quite exciting. So next question is from at Michael underscore G.J. underscore. And he says thoughts on drinking liquid gold, breast milk for gains i think it's bs but apparently people do it so yes people actually do drink breast milk this is no joke uh and it's been around for a really long time i want to say it was first popularized by the bodybuilding

community but one of the things uh that one of the big driving reasons for this is, of course, the fact that breast milk has proteins. I believe it's high in omega fats or it is at least high in nutritious fats, which is also quite interesting. And then the first drop of a mother's milk, that first couple, you know, sips, whatever you want to call it, right when the baby comes out, I'm not a, I'm not a baby expert, if you can tell, um, there's a substance known as colostrum and colostrum is exceptionally healthful. It's got tons of nutrients. It's amazing. And so people know that breast milk is good for protein. It's, it's got the good fats. It may have some colostrum and all kinds of crazy stuff. And bodybuilders will try anything. People who want to perform at the highest level will try anything. And I know that probably like from the jump breast milk seems

really strange. Like you're like, Oh, that's the weirdest thing anybody would ever eat. That's the weirdest thing anybody would ever eat. People eat a lot weirder things, I think, than breast milk. You know, at one point, most of us probably drank quite a bit of breast milk, you know, and we outgrow it. But it doesn't mean it becomes, you know, non-nutritious for humans. That being said, I could never in my right mind sit down and drink a glass of that if i even if i knew it would improve my performance like five to ten percent you'd have to you in my opinion you would have to say to me this is gonna improve your aesthetics i'm gonna say at least ten percent this is gonna

have to improve your strength at least five percent And this is going to have to give you one additional property, like make your skin better, make your hair better, something cool, something that I might find interesting. You'd have to give me a sweet deal from my returns to get me to go out, acquire, and consume breast milk on a regular enough basis to get the supposed benefits that you can't get from any other type of milk or from just getting these nutritious compounds separately. It's kind of silly. I do think it is a little bit funny. But this, like I said,

this has actually been around for a surprisingly long time. Okay, next question is from atrosies2593. She says, losing body fat but arms are getting, quote-unquote, bigger. Switch to less weight and higher rep ranges? Well, you could try that. I think the number one thing we have to look at here is that, you know, some people build muscle a little bit more easily in other areas. If you're losing body fat and you're noticing your arms are getting quote-unquote bigger, but you still have some body fat to lose,

I could almost assure you you're building a little bit of muscle under there. And as you get leaner, your arms might take a shape that you're slightly more comfortable with. So I would just say keep going. If you think your arms are just genuinely becoming too muscular for your liking then you can dial back the volume or just don't train so close to failure proximity to failure seems to have the greatest uh correlation with hypertrophy when we look at that and maybe some other things like sensation or pump or total weight used or number of sets or number of reps. All of those things might matter, but nothing really seems to matter as much as training close to failure.

So I would just dial back on the hard arm training that you're doing. All right, and last question is from AtThailand2, and he says, My deads are lagging behind my other lifts. What are some tips to increase deadlifts? So let's just say conventionally, and again, this all actually ties into power build. So we'll talk a little bit about that maybe as we go. Deadlifts are one of the few movements that when somebody says, I want to get better at deadlifts, or I want to get better at something, I don't just say, well, just do more of them. Because deadlifts do have a large

amount of systemic fatigue that they place on the body because of how intensely they load the spine. Exercises that load the spine in general are going to have the highest likelihood of fatiguing the central nervous system. And we don't necessarily want to do that all the time. And we definitely would want to do it so much that we got burnt out from our training and we were more prone to injury. But one of the things that I think is really important to consider with deadlifts is it's a skill. So you have to deadlift or practice those mechanics enough to really master it. And I think that a lot of people who deadlift, even a lot of people who can deadlift a decent amount of weight could still stand to do some technique work.

So, you know, the number one thing I would say is lock in your technique across all of your warm-up sets. Consider your strength progressions like, you know, path A, but then your technique progressions, path B. If you want to get the most out of your training, you can become a technician with how you approach the bar. But at some point, you have to step up and actually fucking grip it and rip it you have to actually take the fucking stallion for a ride it's the only way it's going to happen right so you have to sack up when you're there but you can't sack up five days a week so be a technician train hard and then we talk about how we layer in that frequency so for anybody who wanted to optimize the strength of a big lift,

I would have you do it at least twice a week. Deadlifts, I might not be in a hurry to push it all the way up to three, but you could do that. But let's just say you do it twice a week. Well, the first block of the Power Build program is linear progression. If you're training a lift twice a week with any degree of progression baked into it, you're probably going to be fine if you're not training like a complete slapdick.

And you could do something like a conjugate periodization, which is the second block of power build, which focuses on one day where we're training at a more maximum effort with higher weights, training more of our strength speed. And then another day where we're training at higher velocities with greater power, more of our speed strength. And so we're developing power, which is a really important component of how we lift. And it's where we get the right power is like the fucking NOS. It's the car's moving fast, it's gonna suck to get hit by it. That's the strength. But the fucking power is the NOS you you don't want to get hit by a car going 50. But you definitely don't want to get hit by a car going 50, but you definitely don't want to get hit by a car going 80. And so you could experiment with working in some speed and velocity work, right? That's really, really

big. Another thing you could maybe do is say, Hey, what, as far as the way my physique is developed, like, do I have disproportionate development of like my chest and quads? Like most dudes? Well, I have like little pissant hamstrings and a shit set of lats because both of those help you fucking deadlift if you have a pussy lats and like really really crap low traps and like weak glutes and weak hamstrings and like your isolation work consists mostly of cable flies and quad extensions like you can't expect your squat and bench not to outpace your deadlift right you you have to have to put requisite hypertrophy work in to be successful on all of them. No kidding.

However, the neglected stuff, at least for newer lifters, tends to be the lats and the hamstrings. But if you can strengthen lats, hammies, glutes, lower traps, train smart, train frequently enough that you become skilled at the lift, develop a little bit of power and develop a little bit of strength,'ll be fine and if you really want to get good just wait for the program to come out in a couple of weeks all right you guys super appreciate you tuning in you guys are amazing i know i just went on a really uh aggressive dead lifting rant but when i talk shop about training i get passionate it's cool it's fun i love it it's why i do what i do and

i'm so happy that you guys are here listening. Stay tuned. Keep dialed in. I appreciate every single one of you. Have a good one.