Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 71 - Plant Based Diet, Overtraining, Belts, and Creatine

Episode Date: September 23, 2020

In this episode, Danny dives into your questions! We talk about topics very prevalent in the fitness community! Plant based diets, overtraining, how to implement creatine! Hope you have a wonderful day!---Thanks For Listening!---RESOURCES/COACHING:Legion Athletics Supplements and Nutrition, 20% OFF YOUR FIRST ORDER CODE: DANNY at ‘Checkout’! Click HERE!Check out my programs and E-Books! Click HERE!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:“Can plant based diets be good for weightlifting?” 3:47“At what point does overexercising become deleterious to your training/results?” 12:50“I see people using belts. How do I know when to use one and what do they do?” 22:59“Should I creatine load, and should I take breaks from creatine?” 26:52Support the Show.

Hey everybody, welcome in to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue Podcast. As always, I am your host, Danny Matrenga, and today's episode, we are going to be diving into the mailbag. I'm going to be answering a question specific to plant-based dieting, over-exercising, as well as talking a little bit about the utilization of a weightlifting belt and how to properly integrate creatine into your protocols, whether that's as a supplement to enhance performance, a supplement to enhance muscle gain, or just something you want to include for general health.

So we'll go over that a little bit as well, because quite frankly, it's honestly the supplement I get the most questions about, which is somewhat surprising to me because it is so well studied. It's out there. It's so common. But I think we're getting a second wave of kind of awakening, if you will, around creatine supplementation, primarily from the female lifting community, because it is becoming increasingly more popular for female lifters to take creatine now that the stigmatization around it has kind of subsided, especially over the last couple of years, which is awesome. But it's always

something that I feel like I have to dive into pretty regularly. But before we get started, guys, I just want to remind you, if you have not already, and you're looking for questions, or answers, I should say, if you have questions, and you're looking for questions or answers, I should say. If you have questions and you're looking for answers regarding your fitness, specifically nutrition, how it is to properly put together workouts and train, how to optimize your sleep and fine tune your performance. Right. A lot of the questions that I answer on the podcast, I've written guides about that you can find on my website. All you have to do is go to www.coachedannymatranga.com. Click the free resources tab and go to the free guide section. I have guides on fat loss, the fundamentals of nutrition, the fundamentals of proper programming, even the fundamentals of being a good coach.

fundamentals of proper programming, even the fundamentals of being a good coach, guides on how to build your glutes, improve your sleep, supplements, dieting, home workout protocols, you name it. It's all there for you for free on www.coachedaniematringa.com. That's also where you can find my programs like the Female Physique Program, Power Build, Foundations, all of the stuff that you need to optimize your training and performance to take it to the next level is for you there. So thank you all so much again for tuning in to the podcast. I also want to give a quick shout out to my partner Legion Athletics. Legion is the premier sports performance supplement brand in the space. Everything is clinically dosed. All of the active ingredients come with a plethora of references on the website telling you why the

amount of that ingredient was put in, the impact it will have on your physiology, the positive benefits it will elicit for your training, your recovery, your health, whatever it may be for each and every product is listed right there on the website. So if you guys want to support me and you want to support the show, you can head on over to legionathletics.com and add to checkout, use the promo code DANNY for 20% off your first order. If you're somebody who regularly takes vitamins, protein, creatine, pre-workout, or you need something to help you fall asleep, you want to optimize the health of your microbiome, you want to take some fish oil to manage inflammation, all of that stuff

is available for you over there on legionathletics.com. Again, use the promo code Danny to support the show. Good luck with your training. And let's dive in to our first question, which is all about plant-based dieting for lifting. Now, there wasn't a name attached to this question. It just came in via email. But the question is, can plant-based diets be good for weightlifting? I'm getting a lot of conflicting information in the space right now, and I'm not sure exactly what to do. So I think this is a great question. And so first, let's actually define what it is that we're going to be talking about within the criterion of the term plant-based dieting. You can really look at this two ways, and I think we need to make sure that we have a concrete definition. Plant-based, to me,

when I hear that term, means the basis of your diet revolves around plant matter. That would be anything like legumes, fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. When I think plant-based, that means to me that your diet is revolving around that. However, in recent years, the term plant-based has been a effectively pseudo-vegan-esque terminology. So when you hear plant-based, it basically just means vegan. And so that would mean, yes, your diet revolves around all of those things. However, it also does not include any animal product whatsoever. So we will kind of move forward with this definition of plant-based to mean what most people are saying when they say it nowadays, which is veganism. Okay, we're going to talk about the impact of a vegan diet on your muscle gaining strength performance outcomes.

Okay, but we'll circle the wagons around at the end and talk a little bit about how you can best optimize your diet if you don't want to go full vegan, but you want to eat mostly plants, which is what I believe plant-based should mean. But I think colloquially and recently, it just means vegan. So the question says, what are the health benefits of a plant-based diet and will it affect your strength and sports performance? So first and foremost, I think it's important to take into account that any diet that includes a high amount of plant matter, whether it's a pescatarian diet, a ketogenic diet, a vegan diet, a plant-based diet, has potential to be very nutritious for multiple reasons. that are hard to get in other places. And they're also loaded with nutritious prebiotic fiber, which can help you feel full, satiated, and protect against things like high blood pressure, high blood sugars,

as well as helping to impact the gut microbiome quite positively by giving those little bugs in there something to eat, because that's what they like to eat, right? Prebiotic fiber. Half of the reason that we can't digest fiber in the first place is because we need it to feed those bacterium in our gut. It's so important for them to get something to snack on, right? And while they can eat next to

anything, their preferred fuel source is fiber. That's what those guys like to snack on. So a diet rich in fibrous fruits, vegetables, and whole grains will give your gut microbiome a little bit of an advantage. However, that's not a reason in and of itself to eat a high enough amount, like just a high amount of plants. Again, we're getting those polyphenols, those micronutrients like vitamins and minerals. We get a lot of water when we eat plant-based because most of these plants are high in water, particularly things like fruits and green vegetables. So a lot of really good things will happen there from a health standpoint.

Again, we're talking about micronutrition and a lot of fiber. Some of the problems we might run into from a health standpoint would be, of course, it's more difficult to get protein, which is vital for metabolism, for muscle reparation. All of our tissues are effectively made from protein. So a supplemental form of protein is necessary for some people who choose to eat a vegan diet. Another thing that might be worth considering is, am I going to get adequate vitamin B12? That can be tricky for some people. Most people supplement there. Am I going to get adequate vitamin B12? That can be tricky for some people. Most people supplement there. Am I going to get adequate omega-3s, right? Omega-3s can be difficult to get from plant sources.

Many fatty plants are high in omega-6s, which independently are not unhealthy, but we want to keep our omega-3 and our omega-6 ratios in check. And then another thing to consider is creatine. Creatine is a supplement we're going to talk about later in the episode, and you'll get to know more about its impact on sports performance down the road. But let's just talk about what we know. High levels of intramuscular and overall creatine have been associated with enhanced sports performance, enhanced recovery, enhanced muscle gain. And we get creatine from our diet, from fish and red meats, we also make a little bit. Those who train at a really high level might be able to get away with having more. But if you're on a vegan diet, you might not get a lot of creatine. So what you might want to focus on is eating that plethora of

rich plant compounds like we talked about. Get your fruits, get your veggies, get your whole grains, get your beans. That's all awesome. Supplement perhaps with some protein. I would recommend a brown rice pea protein blend and maybe supplement with vitamin B12, omega-3, and creatine. That will be a way in which you could eat vegan but still make sure that you had all of your bases covered. You could also try something like an essential amino acid supplement if you are not a huge fan of protein powders. So that's for the vegan version of quote-unquote plant-based. But what if you're just somebody who, like a lot of my older female clients, doesn't love to eat a ton of meat? You prefer to eat plant matter, but you're not full-blown vegan. Well, I think at that point, we really need to consider what protein sources

are going to offer you the best bang for your buck. I completely understand that there's a ton of people out there who don't love the idea or just the practice of eating a ton of meat. It's not for everybody. We all have different palates. And what I found is, particularly with women, there seems to be a high percentage of you

who just plain out don't want to eat a ton of meat. And you like eating lots of salads and cruciferous vegetables and things like this and fruits. So what should we do to attack this and make the most of that plant based diet with making small inclusions of proteins to help fill in the gaps? Well, remember when we were talking about an exclusively vegan diet, I highlighted the importance of creatine, omega-3s, right? So check it out. Creatine is something, again, like I said, it's found in fatty fish as well as red meat. We can also get a lot of omega-3s from fatty fish and red meat,

particularly grass-fed red meat. However, one of the things that I found to be a relatively common thread with people who prefer to eat a lot of vegetables is if they had to choose protein sources, they would opt more for poultry and fish than red meat. This just seems to be a consistency with this type of person. If you're one of these types of people, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. Coaches, you'll probably know what I'm talking about too. There's just some people out there who don't love red meat. So for plant-based dieters, I would recommend eating salmon. Hopefully you can get wild-caught Atlantic salmon that's loaded with omega-3s as well as creatine two to maybe three times a week if you can afford

it. It's an amazing protein source, but it's also incredibly rich, like I said, in creatine and omega-3. So for those of you who want to eat more plants and fill in the gaps that will be kind of left open if you don't eat like all the perfect plant foods all the time, salmon should be on your grocery list every single week. Another thing for those of you who don't love to eat a ton of meat, dairy is an excellent option, right? Loaded with calcium, vitamin D, some forms of dairy like kefir and yogurts are fermented. So they come loaded with a lot of awesome probiotic properties. They've also been historically linked to improved health. I know that there's a lot of people pushing back against dairy, but overall diets that tend to be higher in dairy tend to promote health. Most of these dairy products are loaded with protein, so they make a fantastic option there. So if you are somebody who wants to

supplement a little bit of animal protein into your mostly plant-based diet, I think that dairy, fish, and poultry tend to be the most agreeable place to start because a lot of people, Dairy, fish, and poultry tend to be the most agreeable place to start because a lot of people, like I said, simply do not enjoy eating high amounts of red meat. And I think that's totally fine, but we have to give red meat credit where credit is due. And that is in the fact that, generally speaking, it is quite nutritious and it's loaded, loaded with vitamins and minerals that become harder to get if we don't eat it. So supplementing with things like dairy, or I shouldn't say supplementing, but including things like cheeses and dairy in a most, or cheeses, dairy, and fish into a mostly plant-based diet is a great place to start. And if you are going to go full-blown vegan, it makes sense to supplement to optimize your health and performance. So hopefully we circle the wagons on that one.

All right, the next question is about over-exercising. And at what point does over-exercising actually become deleterious to your sports performance? Meaning, where is that line at which point we've gone beyond what it is we can recover from. And we are at a place now where we're actually potentially even going backwards. And I think that a lot of people are in the clear. I think most people flat out don't train hard enough. They might train too long or they might train with too much volume, but they're not necessarily training hard. So we'll break this down a little bit as we go. But as far as overexercising, I would say it's more common amongst women who are looking to lose body fat.

And it's more common amongst men who are looking to build muscle. And so let's talk about what this looks like in practice. And we're going to put everything through the lens and with the caveat of you can only make the gains that you can adequately recover from. So typical female archetypes that I see with regards to women who are consistently overtraining, what you'll tend to see is a high amount of aerobic activity, often set up as two different sessions. So you'll have your traditional weight training session, usually midday, paired with a cardiovascular session that's oftentimes separate and usually done in the morning fasted. I see this a lot with women. Get up early, do the cardio, come back in the afternoon and do the weights, or do some cardio, lift weights, go do more cardio. Now, here's the

problem with this. A lot of times what you'll see is you'll see cardiovascular activity done at such a high duration that the actual effort and output when you get to the weight training session, whether that's after the cardio or as a separate session, you're not getting a high degree of output from that resistance training session. Another thing you'll see with women is the inclusion of just massive, massive amounts of junk volume, or just relatively low intensity, low intent, low effort exercise done for high reps, and high volumes in an effort to burn calories, but that aren't necessarily stimulating a high amount of muscle tissue growth, because we're not getting a ton of intensity, we're not getting a ton of time

under tension, we're not getting quality reps, We're not necessarily doing reps close to failure. We're just doing a lot of reps, oftentimes body weight or low weight, quote unquote, in that toning philosophy ideology space. But we're not necessarily doing the type of training that's going to elicit the maximum return on your muscle growth. And so you end up in a situation where you have women in the gym for a really long amount of time doing work that's not necessarily stimulating what you want to stimulate. But the problem with being in the gym for a long amount of time is that you start to get physiological adaptations which aren't necessarily aligned with long-term muscle growth. Like you start to get a spike in cortisol after you've been in the gym over 60 minutes. And so you need to have some form of muscle stimulation, right? You need to be stimulating that tissue to warrant going beyond that 60 minutes.

And if you're training like, you know, kind of a, for lack of a better term, kind of a weenie out there for, you know, two hours, you're going to get a big cortisol dump. But if you don't have stimulation aligned with muscle growth you're just burning calories and so that's a really common problem with women is long workouts with lots of reps lots of jumping around but not a ton of stimulation and then they're in there for a super long amount of time and they tend to period that with not adequate amount of food not great sleep lots of stress and that's's not an optimal place for muscle growth. So that's what overexercising tends to look like for women.

With men, we see a lot of the same stuff sands some of that cardiovascular exercise. So a lot of the same junk volume, trying to do as many exercises as possible, lots of mindless poking around, supersets, not necessarily training close to failure, not necessarily training with good technique, not necessarily training with good technique, form or intent, just including things in there for the sole purpose of increasing the duration of your workout, you know, doing 10 to 12 exercises, none of them with a high degree of efficiency or intent, which isn't ideal for training for muscle growth. With regards to training to muscle growth, it's likely better to train closer to failure with great technique, great intent on fewer exercises than it is to try to be in the gym

for two hours and fit in as much as possible. So with men, I think the big issue is they're doing the right exercises. They might just be adding too many to the back half of the workout and not training close enough to failure with good intent. If you really want to build muscle, it's better to probably train for less time, maybe 60 to 90 minutes, but train with a really high amount of intent with great technique and closer to failure. I think that would give you a better chance, right? Because the shorter your sessions is not the takeaway here,

not to shorten your sessions, but to make each minute more meaningful by training closer to failure with a higher degree of efficiency. And anybody who's a trainer here will know what I'm talking about. Because one of the biggest things you'll see is when you take somebody on as a new client, particularly in person, with that increased intensity, taking people closer to failure, people working harder because they're trainers, they're coaches, they're pushing them. That makes a huge difference. People see tremendous gains training for lower durations

when they start with a trainer. They're like, oh man, you know, I used to train for two hours, but now I come in and work with my coach for an hour and I'm fried. Well, that's because that one hour is really impactful when you're training hard and with intent. So remember, you only make the gains you can recover from. So now that we've kind of laid this out and said, okay, this is probably what over-exercise is going to look like In practice, this is kind of what you're going to see where we're past the theoretical, this is what I've actually seen in the trenches, we can put together kind of a framework here to avoid it. And so in general, I think workouts should be between 60 to 90 minutes. I think if you're going to do cardiovascular exercise as

well, it's fine, you going to do cardiovascular exercise as well, it's fine. You want to do it probably prior to your training as a means of elevating core body temperature. If you're going to be doing high intensity interval training or any type of sprint training that you toss in the cardio bucket, whether you should or shouldn't, I think those should be done as separate sessions. Okay. I think if you're not training hard with intent or joy, and you found that it's hard to get through your workouts, you're not enjoying them if you're not training hard with intent or joy and you found that it's hard to get through your workouts you're not enjoying them they're not challenging you anymore you're not pushing yourself you might be at a place where you've already over trained not over trained in the sense that you've pushed your body beyond what it could recover from or you've been

training so hard but to the point where you're actually experiencing psychological burnout that is a component of over training that doesn't get talked about a lot and that is the point where you're actually experiencing psychological burnout. That is a component of overtraining that doesn't get talked about a lot. And that is the fact that you're just simply not enjoying training anymore. So if that is in fact the case, again, try shortening your workout and attacking the most meaningful exercises early with intensity and intent. That should build some momentum and hopefully get you excited to finish things off. But if you're staring down the barrel of a bunch of exercises you don't want to do, it might be better to take a rest day or two or even a week, circle the wagons and put together a protocol or program

that's aligned with doing workouts closer to 60 to 90 minutes long that are actually effective. Or just go to my website and buy a program and then attack that. But if every day you show up at the gym, like I said, you're not training hard, you're not enjoying yourself there, you're burnt out, you're on your phone, you need to circle the wagons, you need to get back to the drawing board and say, okay, something's going on here. It's very possible that you might be overtrained, or you just might be at a place of psychological burnout,

especially right now, if you're like training in your garage or you're training in your living room, all of that stuff definitely makes a difference. But you need to identify that and look to fix it as fast as possible because you don't want three, six, 12, 24 months to go by and been like, wow, I've been training without joy, intent or rash or just really any gains for a long amount of time. That's going to be super disappointing for you and I don't want anybody to get into that place because it happens. If you are at a place where you feel so guilty or so upset with yourself that you cannot take a day off from the gym, I would genuinely consider talking to a therapist, getting some psychological help. Exercise should

be something that improves our life. It should be something that we can be dedicated to, that we can really commit ourselves to, but still have the healthy level of detachment from and be able to step away from. If you're in a cycle where stepping away from exercise for a day or two makes you feel guilty, like fat, slob, like you start to beat up on yourself, that is when you need to start to consider looking into meeting with a psychological professional because that is genuinely not an ideal relationship to have with exercise. Okay, so another rule of thumb I have just to circle the wagons here and wrap it up. For every hour of training you do, okay, you should bake in one hour of additional recovery. So if you're going to train for an hour, you should recover for an hour.

And what I mean by that is go outside and go for a walk. Make sure you get an hour of restful downtime before bed. Maybe you work in a massage or some sauna. Stuff that's going to promote recovery. So it's fine, right? Like if you have a couple hours of training set up across the week, you're good to go. But if you're going to add more training to that, you should look to add in additional opportunities to recover as you go along.

And of course, sleep is incredibly critical for all of this. If you're not getting between seven to nine hours of sleep, that could be the root cause of all of these issues. Getting adequate sleep is perhaps the best thing you can do to set yourself up for recuperative, restorative levels of recovery where you can actually just, like, again, take a seven to nine hour sleep and just be boom, good to go for your next training session. If you're like training for an hour and a half, two hours like shit, and then going and getting five, six hours of sleep, waking up at 5am, going to the gym and getting two hours of shitty lifting

in, you're not going to get very far. I hate to break it to you. It's just the way it is. It's the way the physiology works. You only make the gains you can recover from. All right, so these questions are from Instagram, and this one is from at snow-cone, and she asks, I see people using belts.

How do I know when to use them myself? What do they do? So the first thing we have to cover is that there's actually different types of belts when it comes to weightlifting. You have thin leather belts, and then you have thick leather belts, and then you have those kind of neoprene Velcro belts. All of them do the same things, basically, but at different levels. So a lot of people also, I think it's important to go here before we dive into what belts actually do. A lot of people wear belts tight around their waist because they've been told that that can help shrink your waist and make your waist smaller.

And whether there's any truth to that or not hasn't really been studied effectively in the scientific literature. But what I can say is if you are wearing a belt all the time, and you're wearing a belt all the time so that you can diminish the size of your waist, you can make your waist look smaller, the way in which you're doing that is by creating so much reliance on the belt that you have atrophy of your core musculature. That's not really an ideal outcome. If your goals are performance and

longevity, I wouldn't do that. If your goals truly are to see your waist come down as much as possible, perhaps there's a logical way in which you could do that using a belt, but I don't think it's ideal for your long-term performance. What belts are specifically designed for, right, and this is getting to the core of the question. Belts are specifically designed to help increase intra-abdominal pressure by allowing you to expand your midsection into the belt and create a ton of intra-abdominal pressure through actively contracting the external obliques, using our intra-abdominal musculature, our rectus abdominis, our breath, and our rib cage to create a ton of tension through the midsection by again, expanding into that belt. That increased intra abdominal pressure

helps to increase stabilization through the spine helps to protect our low back helps to create irradiation or intramuscular tension throughout the entire midsection and connect everything we're doing when we do things like squats, and deadlifts. So there's a lot of reason to use one, especially as you get stronger and stronger and stronger. The more weight you have on the bar, right, the greater, of course, forces we're going to be applying to structures like our spine, our core, and our midsection. So having a belt there can really, really help. But when do you integrate a belt into your training well there's several different ways in which you can do it you can get a belt right from the get-go and use it on your heavy sets you can wear a belt your entire training which i don't recommend at all some people like to do that

every set of their squats and deadlifts they have a belt on so what i like to do is for males when you get to a place where you can deadlift three plates squat two plates uh for women when you get to a place where you can deadlift three plates, squat two plates. For women, when you get to a place where you can squat about a plate and a quarter, and you can deadlift about two plates, that's where I would start to look at, hey, I want to have a belt because I'm lifting weights that are relatively heavy. And that as your training career progresses and you build on that, having a belt is going to help with performance and safety. So after you've gotten your strength numbers up to that range,

you've looked into getting a good belt, I recommend an Inzer lever belt, but you can, again, do a clasp belt. You can do a neoprene belt. What I would then do is say when you're working up to your heavy squats and deadlifts or front squats or anything that you might feel like you want a belt for like bench even or overhead press for your first couple warm-up and technique sets i wouldn't wear the belt but when you get into your working sets that's when i would put the belt on that's when i would start to get into a rhythm of becoming more reliant on it as you get closer and closer to your maximal effort sets so that's the framework I like for using a belt.

And again, answering the question of when should I get one? And then once I have one, how to use it. So last question is from at Emmy Jaravella again on Instagram. And she asks, should I creatine load? And should I take breaks from creatine? So again, I told you guys, we'd get to creatine in today's episode, and we're going to talk about it right now. But what creatine effectively does is it helps us regenerate ATP from ADP. And it can do this within our skeletal muscle. It also does this by pulling water into the tissue, helping us have as much fuel as possible for intramuscular work. And supplemental creatine helps us do all of the stuff I just mentioned a little bit more quickly than had we just gotten creatine from our diet.

Now, again, supplementing with creatine is not a necessity for people who eat high amounts of meat, particularly red meat and fish. But due to all the emerging research on creatine's impact positively on the brain, on cognitive health, and quite frankly, the fact that I think a ton of people don't eat a lot of red meat and fish on the brain, on cognitive health, and quite frankly, the fact that I think a ton of people don't eat a lot of red meat and fish all the time, I

think it's something you can supplement with all the time. But when it comes time to actually get creatine on the shelf, toss it into your shaker and take it, one of the biggest questions people have is, should I load this creatine? We'll talk about that. And should I take breaks from it? We'll talk about that. And should I take breaks from it? We'll talk about that. So first, let's break down what it is that we are really doing when we load creatine. So a lot of creatine will recommend a loading phase first and foremost. And a typical dosage for loading phases is like 15 to 20 grams of creatine per day for about a week, followed

there for like or thereafter by about five grams a day. That's what we would call a maintenance dose. So you do a loading dose 15 to 20 grams a day for about a week, followed by a five gram a day maintenance dose. Loading creatine is done in an effort to more quickly saturate your intramuscular creatine stores. more quickly saturate your intramuscular creatine stores. Taking 15 to 20 grams a day will expedite that process. However, if you take just 5 grams a day, you will still reach saturation in a reasonable amount of time.

We're talking about if you take a loading dose, you might get fully saturated by like 10 days. If you take a 5 gram a day maintenance dose, it might take 3 weeks to 4 weeks, but you'll still reach full saturation. One of the reasons I do not recommend taking a loading dose is it's been associated in my coaching with what I've seen. I don't know the research on this, but I've seen this quite frequently. When people take loading doses of creatine, they get gastrointestinal distress. They start shitting their pants. They start farting. They have all kinds of gas and stomach problems from taking 20 grams of creatine a day. That stuff just doesn't seem

to show up with maintenance doses. So for people who want to get the benefits of creatine supplementation, I understand totally like, hey, I want to get this as fast as possible. This is a great supplement. It does a lot of stuff. I want it to work as quickly as it can. If you want to load, load. But I wouldn't recommend it because again, you're going to get to that place eventually anyway, taking a maintenance dose and you run the risk of having that GI discomfort when you load. So I do five grams a day for a maintenance dose. And then I have clients take anywhere from two and a half to five grams a day. After that, every single day, I don't necessarily recommend taking breaks. Some people like to say, Hey, you should take a break

from everything every once in a while. And I totally respect that approach. But for me, I just don't think it's a necessity. So that's my opinion on creatine loading and creatine breaks. I like to just take five grams a day and it's part of my routine.

Hopefully you guys enjoyed this episode. If you did, make sure to do me a favor. Leave me a five-star rating and review on iTunes. Share this podcast to your Instagram story. You have no idea just how many people you did make sure to do me a favor leave me a five-star rating and review on itunes share this podcast to your instagram story you have no idea just how many people might have the same exact questions you do and sharing this might help answer it again guys if you want to support the show go to www.coachdanymetranga.com buy one of my awesome programs maybe pair that with some legion supplements on legion.com using the promo code Danny. And if you just want some help or guidance with your nutrition training or personal training

career, check out the free resources section on my website as well as the blogs. I hope you guys have an amazing rest of your week. If you're hearing this on the day it drops, it'll be September 23. So we're getting a little bit closer to October. And if you are like me, hopefully you're getting a little bit closer to getting out And if you are like me, hopefully you're getting a little bit closer to getting out of this quarantine zone that we've been in because of the pandemic. So wherever you're at, good luck, have an awesome rest of your day, and we'll be checking in very soon. Thanks again.