Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 74 - Q&A: Arm Training, Frequency, Soreness and MORE!

Episode Date: October 19, 2020

In this episode, Danny dives into some of your questions, rapid fire style! We talk about getting those arm gains to muscle soreness and MUCH, MUCH MORE! We cover everything today!Submit your questions via Instagram when Danny posts a "Any Questions" IG story prompt or HERE!---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:“You say frequency matters, but keeping frequency in mind, it is hard to get rest days!” 2:40“Any suggestions for sitting for long periods of time at work? I get knee pain!” 7:28“I get sore as f--- two full days after I train, is this normal?” 9:09“What are Danny’s thoughts on supersets?” 11:25“What is the best way to start taking creatine? Brand to choose?” 13:43“Do you think working night shifts affect fat loss and gym progression?” 16:51“How to approach a reverse diet when you are a chronic dieter?” 18:09“How do you recommend starting creatine?” 21:28 “Thoughts on collagen peptide?” 21:45 “When you change training blocks every 6-8 weeks, what do you specifically change?” 24:36 “Thoughts on non-stimulant pre-workouts?” 26:21“Favorite bicep exercises?” 28:01“What are your thoughts on eating before training?” 29:43“For an individual doing primarily weight lifting, how often should I have rest days?” 31:01“Best exercises to build the triceps?” 32:28“Does it make a huge difference if you count calories versus macros?” 33:42Support the Show.

Welcome in everybody to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. As always, I am your host Danny Matringa. For anybody who is new to the podcast, this is one of, if not the best ways to interact with me outside of social media. to use this platform a lot for in-depth Q&As and discussions about a variety of topics that will influence your health, fitness, performance, and longevity. There are tons of interviews. There's an awesome library of chats with me and some of my friends in the industry talking about a variety of topics that I'm sure will interest you. So if you're new, be sure to hit subscribe, follow along with the show, go back, listen to old episodes, share them if you enjoy them. And if you want to support the show,

if you're a longtime listener, feel free to head over to legionathletics.com and purchase some of the best sports performance supplements in the industry. Legion is a brand, the only brand, I work with in the supplement space. I really like their stuff and you can support the show by using promo code danny at checkout to save 20 off your first

order you can also support the show by going over to www.coachedannymattringer.com and purchasing one of my programs whether it's's foundations, my athletic program, primarily focused around building an aerobic base while really focusing on bilateral strength with a lot of unilateral stability work baked into it, power build, my hybrid program that focuses on hypertrophy and strength, or my female physique program, which is a hypertrophy program specifically put together to help women develop their glutes, hamstrings, upper back, and shoulders. So guys, today's episode is going to be all about answering your questions. I'm actually going to do a rapid-fire Q&A today.

I'm really looking forward to this, as Q&A episodes tend to actually be my favorite type of episodes to do. I really enjoy sitting down and answering your questions, particularly in great detail. Now, all of these are going to be fielded from my Instagram. So if you ever see me on my Instagram at Danny Matranga, toss up a question box. Every once in a while, I'll answer them on my story. But quite a few of them are going to actually get answered right here on the podcast. So if you want, like I said, really in-depth fitness expertise and answers to your specific questions, be sure to follow along because all of these answers are coming directly from listeners or followers. So first question is from underscore Asher underscore 39.

First question is from underscore Asher underscore 39. And they say, you say frequency matters to build muscle, but keeping frequency in mind, it is hard to get rest days. So there is some truth to this. But in an effort to break it down, we have to define what it is that frequency really means. Now, I am a huge fan of frequency. However, that doesn't necessarily mean frequency of sessions. It might mean frequency with which you train individual muscles. So, for example, if you did three times a week total body training, you would train each muscle group three times per week.

That is somewhere in that range of what we would consider an ideal frequency. Remember, the science smiles quite fondly upon two to three times per week per muscle group. We'll dive into this more as we get along here. However, if you did three times a week total body, that would leave four days of rest, right? So we can use frequency in conjunction with intelligent program design and intelligent exercise selection to place frequency in our program whilst leaving room for rest days. So if you're like myself and you don't like total body training, you prefer split training, you could still do a four day a week upper lower split, which would again give you two times per week to train each muscle group, right? We're going to train all of our upper

body muscles on two upper days, all of our lower body muscles on two lower days, that still leaves three days for rest. If you did a fat training protocol, like that's a very popular Lane Norton program that I've run in my earlier years training, that's a five-day-a-week split with two power days and three hypertrophy days. That still leaves two days for rest. Now, how can we take what we just talked about and strategically apply the practice of using frequency to develop our tissue? For example, how can I say if I want to develop my arms, prioritize that using frequency? Well, you might get to bend the rules a little bit.

And what I mean by that is say, hey, I want to take advantage and leverage frequency, but I don't want to give up my rest days. Maybe you do four days a week, up or lower, up or lower, but you hit arms on every single training session for a whole training block. And we might call that overreaching. We might call that strategically incorporating a high amount of volume. A lot of people would call that density. So maybe we would do biceps on our upper body days and triceps on our lower body days, training arms, a cumulative four times per week. That would be a great way to add volume within the confines of your program. And what's

really interesting and what I have found to be true and what makes sense physiologically in general is the smaller a muscle group is, the more frequently you can train it without systemic fatigue and without doing a ton of muscle damage that's going to get in the way of some of your other training. I have had really good luck with high frequency protocols for the arms, the calves, the abs, and the shoulders, particularly the deltoids. Those are muscle groups that I've had clients train three, sometimes four times per week. They've seen great growth, better growth than they were getting before. week. They've seen great growth, better growth than they were getting before. And despite training those muscle groups three to four times a week, the volume is relatively high compared to the rest of the protocol, but it's not absurd. We might do like five sets per day, 20 sets total if we trained

it four times per week. That tends to work really well for these smaller muscle groups because they just don't seem to contribute as much to cumulative fatigue. Pecs, lats, hamstrings, glutes, and quads, huge muscles. We tend to have to load them, particularly if you're working out from home, using compound movements like squats, deadlifts, presses, pull-ups, you name it. That can really contribute to systemic fatigue quite quickly. So those are movements, or rather I should say those are muscle groups that I like to prioritize single joint movements like leg extensions, if I was talking quads, or lying hamstring curls or cable flies that don't incur so much systemic fatigue on the body. But guys, all of this to say there are ways to incorporate that really important principle of

frequency into your training as a means to help you develop muscles that you would like to develop without necessarily destroying or hammering your body like a lot of people think because when people hear frequency a lot of times they think that means six days a week push pull pull leg, rest, that's not necessarily the best place for everybody to start. So moving on to the next question, we've got at cav underscore patai. And she asks any suggestions on long sitting for work. I have left knee pain for a month. I'm 26 years old. So as to what's causing the knee pain, can't necessarily say for sure however when you do sit a lot we sit into that hip flex position which can shorten the rectus femoris the largest hip

flexor in the body it's also a quadricep muscle all of the quadricep muscles attached to the tibial tuberosity on the front of the shin through a common tendon and tendinopathies are not super uncommon for the knee. So being seated too much, having too much shortening through the rectum could do this, right? I'm not going to diagnose you. It's a possibility. What I would say in general is get up, move around a little bit more. If you can limit how much time you spend in the seated position, that would be fantastic. Also, training your posterior chain in general tends to be really friendly on the knee, right? We're talking about training the glutes,

training the hamstrings, training the calves. This type of stuff doesn't tend to bother the knee as much as a lot of our anterior chain leg movements like squats, lunges, step-ups, leg extensions, leg press. Those, the way they're traditionally performed, cued and taught can be a little bit more agitating to people who have existing knee problems. I'm not saying they're bad for your knees, but making the right selection of exercises while you are training is really, really important. And then making the point to get up and move around, I think makes a huge difference for literally anybody who sits a lot. So be sure that you do that. All right. So this next question is from at Bay Vino and she

asks, I get sore as fuck AF two full days after I train. Is that normal? Yes, this is actually quite normal. DOMS is what we would call this. DOMS is an acronym, D-O-M-S, delayed onset muscle soreness. You probably already knew that, and if you didn't, you're welcome. Delayed onset muscle soreness is a phenomenon in which the musculature that we trained actually is more tangibly or noticeably sore one to two days after training, sometimes three, than the day of or the day after training. That's why it's called DOMS, delayed onset muscle soreness, and not IOMS, immediately onset muscle soreness, right? So DOMS is quite common. It is quite normal. One of the best ways to combat DOMS, if you are somebody who gets quite a bit of DOMS, is to do a lot of non-resistance

based movement, do some walking, do some aerobic work, do stuff to facilitate blood flow and fluid exchange in and out of the tissue. Make sure that you get plenty of protein to facilitate tissue repair. Make sure that you get plenty of carbohydrates to facilitate central nervous system recovery, glycogen repletion, right? Just general well-being. Carbohydrates are great for energy production. And the big one here I find that makes a huge difference is get lots and lots of sleep. I'll use an anecdote here because this happens quite a bit where I have had clients come in on really short sleep and, you know, they didn't sleep well. They're going through a lot of stress. And I say, hey, look, you're not super primed from a nervous system standpoint. We are not going to go crazy today, okay?

We're not going to go super hard. We're just going to do the best that we can to get through this workout today. And we do like a really low-key workout. And they text me the next day, dude, I don't know what we did. We barely worked out hard, but I'm super sore. And one of the things that that enlightened for me was that that sleep status can really contribute to overall readiness to train and also overall ability to recover from a session. So make sure that your sleep is in check, not just the night after training, but even the night going into training.

That stuff really, really matters. into training. That stuff really, really matters. All right, so the next question comes from Annie, oh no, A Nanny MPJ, and she asks, what are my thoughts on supersets? So I enjoy supersets. My particularly favorite type of supersets are what we would call antagonist paired sets. of supersets are what we would call antagonist paired sets. And antagonist paired sets are just taking two exercises that train opposite muscle groups and training them subsequently. So for example, we would do a bicep curl and a tricep extension, a chest press and a row. Those are oftentimes referred to colloquially as supersets. We also have an exercise superset style known as a compound set, which are training the same muscle groups back to back. So for example, doing a bicep curl paired with a hammer curl, that would be a compound set or what we might call an agonist

paired set, doing a superset of two muscles that perform a similar action or work in a similar function. So when we are doing antagonist paired sets, or what many people simply refer to as supersets, we're usually able to incorporate a little bit more volume into the same amount of time without necessarily limiting our output on either exercise too much, right? Because when we're doing our tricep extension, our biceps aren't contributing too much from a contractile standpoint. They're not taking on a ton of fatigue so we can move nicely into those exercises back and forth. So I don't program supersets for all of my clients. I do them a lot because I really only have about an hour a day to work out.

Unfortunately, I'd love to have more. Matter of fact, I'm going to be going back to say and strike this Saturday. I've scheduled an appointment to use the gym there. And I'm just so looking forward to that. It has been way too long. It's been almost eight months that we've been in this lockdown here in California. Lockdown is probably not the right word, but we've been sheltered in place with limited to no gym access. So it will be nice to get back in there. And I very much look forward to getting some movement in again. It has been far too long. I digress.

So supersets are great, particularly if you are limited on time and you can select exercises that pair well together for your body. Next question is from at Keish Fit, and she asks, what is the best way to start taking creatine? And what is the top brand to use? So I am going to, of course, recommend Legion's Recharge. I am affiliated with Legion, full disclosure. But even before I was affiliated with Legion, I really enjoyed the Recharge creatine. It has my favorite form of creatine, which is creatine monohydrate, which is what I would recommend. So if you are not somebody who wants to take Legion's Creatine, just find a reputable brand of creatine monohydrate, and I find that that

works tremendous for a lot of people. With regards to the best way to start, there are two primary schools of thought. The first is taking what we would call a loading dose. This is the original methodology of taking creatine, which is you take between 10 to 20 grams per day for about a week, and then you shift to a maintenance dose. The reason you load creatine or take a lot up front has to do with the philosophy of saturating those intramuscular creatine stores as quickly as possible. So think about it like this. We needcular creatine stores as quickly as possible. So think about it like this. We need our creatine stores to be full, almost like a bucket. If we had a bucket that was totally full,

we'll get the most out of creatine supplementation. And front-loading and taking a lot out the front will speed up the rate at which we can fill that bucket. However, for a lot of people, taking that much creatine can cause bloating and digestive distress. So I recommend taking a maintenance dose, two and a half to five grams per day, from the jump. Just start there. And remember, I'm not a doctor. Don't take anything I say seriously. I have no idea what I'm talking about. Take two and a

half to five grams per day and extend, right, your expectation for how long it's going to take for this to be effective. So it's not going to kick in in about a week or two. If you would like, you would have, if it loaded, it might take three or four weeks for you to fully notice the benefits. But if you're going to be taking a maintenance dose of two and a half to five grams a day every day anyway, why not just start there and be a little more patient? And I found in general, this is an almost surefire way to make sure that you're not going to experience a lot of that GI or bloating related distress. A lot of people complain about from taking way too much creatine all at once. it what we would call peri-workout. Peri-P-E-R-I refers to the word basically meaning around the workout. We have pre-workout, duh. We have post-workout, duh. And then we have peri-workout, which basically is pre-workout, intra-workout, or post-workout. Anytime we can find space around the workout to fit our creatine in, that's probably the best time to do it because we've got

some transporters open at the level of the tissue that might facilitate better absorption of said creatine. But if you prefer to take it in the morning when you wake up so you remember or in the evening before you go to bed so you remember, that's fine too. Your number one priority should be being consistent with it. It's not so important when you take it as much as it is that you do take it, but if you're in a good rhythm of taking it, I would recommend trying taking it peri-workout. Okay, so this question is from at Claire Ver's Journey, and she asks, do you think night shift work affects weight loss in gym progression? So the answer to this is yes. Most shift workers do struggle with fat loss.

They do struggle a little bit with training because there's quite a bit of circadian disruption. And it's hard to be on a shift, have time off, get back to a normal schedule, and then go back onto your shift work. It really messes with your circadian biology. However, I am not an expert on this topic, but there are a lot of things you can do. And there are a lot of really smart people out there right now who are specifically working on giving people who work in a shift work environment, the resources that they need to be as successful as they can with their resistance training endeavors. So I would say look into ways in which you can better manage your circadian biology on the days that you're working and on the days that you're not working. It might mean eating throughout the night. You know, there's a lot of ways in which we could go about it. I'm not going to dive down that rabbit hole out of respect for the people who are more so of an expert than myself, but it does affect weight loss and progression if you do not handle it

like the unique situation that it is. Next question is from runeatrepeat underscore 138. She says, how to approach a reverse diet when you are a chronic dieter? So it's a good question. Let's first give a definition, I guess, of what exactly a reverse diet is. Then we'll communicate about the merits of doing one and not doing one. And then we'll talk about how to approach it if you're in that chronic dieting mindset. So a reverse diet is effectively a planned return to maintenance calories or estimated maintenance calories after a prolonged time dieting. The proponents of reverse dieting will tell you that going more slowly up to maintenance, doing a reverse diet instead of just going right back to maintenance, minimizes fat regain.

It's very, very effective for people who, like yourself, have a hard time reintroducing food because of that chronic dieting mentality. And I've seen a lot of my clients have really, really great success with it. I think there is merit to using a reverse diet in many cases. There are instances where I would not. And one of those instances might be if I was working with a female and she was losing her menstrual cycle and perhaps losing hair and showing several symptoms of being really, really malnourished, which unfortunately happens when you're working with clients who are trying to get stage lean or perform at a really

high level because of the level of leanness they need to get to kind of have to dance that tight rope of really forfeiting a lot of your health, which is quite unfortunate. So for somebody who is showing a lot of symptoms of really, really poor health, I might say, hey, I don't give a shit if you gain a couple more pounds of fat. We're going right back to maintenance. So you usually have to make a judgment call as to whether or not you want to reverse based on the health and the biofeedback of the client. That stuff is really, really important. Now, in defense of the people out there who have

a really hard time reintroducing food after dieting or getting leaner, you know, a lot of people struggle with that because they've been in such a fixed situation and, you know, in the pursuit of that leanness, you put it up on a pedestal and the last thing you want to do is forfeit it. Approaching a reverse diet with the, you know, mindset of, hey, this is what's probably best for my long-term health. It's probably going to be what's best for my performance. It's probably going to be the best way for me to keep some of this leanness as I return to a legitimately more sustainable way of eating. That's the way you have to approach it. Approach it as something that's going to be good for you in the long run. Approach

it as like, okay, that part of my diet my diet that getting super super lean part of my routine in my life that has come and gone now i want to regain my health i want to get back to a baseline level of you know having some body fat but also being quite lean and getting enough calories into my system where i can really train in a way where i can seek long-term progressive overload, hit some PRs, be functional at work, right? Because if you've dieted to a level of leanness that you need to get to, to say, get on stage or even compete in a low weight class on the platform, like that'll fuck you up. Pardon my French, but that's not an easy way to live your life. And it's certainly not a way I would recommend living your life all year round. So that's what I would probably say is the best thing to do when it comes to approaching it. So this question is from at Lady Swimmer.

And she asks, how do you recommend starting creatine? And so again, same thing I talked about in that earlier question. Try to avoid loading it if you can. Focus on two and a half to five grams per day. All right. Question from at E Muncy. question. Try to avoid loading it if you can. Focus on two and a half to five grams per day. All right. Question from at E. Muncy. She asks thoughts on collagen peptides. So collagen peptides are effectively powdered form of protein. Usually you're going to find collagen peptide is made from animal hide, hoof, usually cows. There are some forms of collagen that are what they would call marine collagen,

which are usually made from fish bones and fish meal. And collagen is effectively anything that's like bone or connective tissue. It's a lot different from meat, which of course would be muscle tissue, or whey protein, which of course would be a byproduct of milk from dairy. So it's a very unique protein. And because of that, it has a unique amino acid profile. Remember, we have 20 amino acids. Each protein has a different ratio of those 20 amino acids. Whey protein is really popular for muscle building because it's super high in the branched chained amino acids, particularly leucine, which are the proteins that we look towards when it comes to building muscle.

Collagen, on the other hand, necessarily speaking, doesn't have as much of those BCAAs. So when we're looking at a protein to use for building muscle and maybe curbing appetite and getting lean, collagen might not necessarily be the best option, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have utility. There are some studies that show that it is effective for helping with tendon and tissue strength, right? Because again, what are our tendons and ligaments made out of? I should say soft tissue strength. It's very nice there to clarify. Tendons are made mostly from collagen. There's also some elastin in there, but a lot of those proteins are super receptive to the stuff we would find in a collagen protein. A lot of people swear by its efficacy for helping with skin and hair,

whether you want to call it health, vitality, you name it. But again, conventionally, that kind of makes some sense. What is hair made out of? What is skin made out of? A combination of collagen, elastin, or keratin. So those amino acids that we might gather from supplemental collagen peptides, while they will probably fall short in helping us develop a ton of skeletal muscle tissue, they might have utility for helping us maintain and maybe even enhance the quality of

those other tissues. Now this isn't super well researched. This is just a line of thinking that makes sense. And it's something that a lot of people anecdotally really lean into. But I would say in general, the body of evidence on collagen supplementation is relatively, it's not super robust just yet. If you want to take it, it's probably not going to hurt you, but it's probably not going to benefit you, but it's probably not going to benefit you in regards to building muscle in the same way that eating animal protein like meat or even whey probably would. Hopefully that makes sense. So next question is from at being Nicole underscore. She asks when you change a split every six to eight or more weeks, what exactly do you

change? So basically, she's saying, what do I change when I go from training block to training block? And that's going to be contingent on what it is that you want to accomplish. For most people, it's nice to introduce new stimuli in the form of different exercises, different repetition schemes, perhaps different tempos, perhaps modifications to existing exercises, maybe going from like a back squat to a front squat, for example. But you're looking to change things for a few primary reasons, one of which is so that you don't get super burnout on your training protocol, one of which is after six to eight weeks of hitting a muscle group really, really hard, you might want to transition some of that volume over to another muscle group so you can achieve that super compensation where you actually make the gains and start working on something else. So

what it is that you change is again entirely correlated with what it is that you're looking to accomplish. But there's a few variables we can really pull on with regards to manipulating a training program. So you can change repetition schemes, you can change volume, you can change exercise selection, you can change tempo, you can change rest periods, you can change for frequency, right? All of those things are variables that we can manipulate. If you want to know more about this, go to my website, www.coachtandymatranga.comcom click the free resources tab and download my free guide it's called training fundamentals that has a ton of answers basically answers this question in grotesque detail as to what it is you're looking to accomplish with making modifications to a

training program okay so this question is from reyes underscore one to two thoughts on non-stim pre-workouts. So non-stimulant pre-workouts are primarily pre-workouts that do not contain caffeine and other stimulants like yohimbine, DMAA, 1,3-dimethylamylamine is what I'm talking about there. So I actually quite like these. The pre-workout I take every day is Allegiance Pulse, and I usually take the Stem Free or I take a scoop of the regular, which is about 150 milligrams of caffeine and a scoop of the Stem Free. And the reason I like the Stem Free is because I don't love caffeine. I'm not crazy for it. I do prefer to have a cup of coffee than pre-workout, so I can do both if I do a stem-free pre-workout.

But we're looking at getting those ingredients that are proven to be effective in a pre-workout like citrulline malate, beta alanine. We've got other things in there like electrolytes are commonly added. We've got B vitamins, for example, that are commonly added. Things like betaine. Those have been shown to help increase exercise performance, but not everybody needs that caffeine because some people are more sensitive. Like I said, some people prefer coffee. Some people might prefer an energy drink. Some people might train too late in the evening, but they want that pre-workout.

Perhaps they like that ritual of drinking something on their way to the gym or while they're warming up. There's a lot of reasons why people take it outside of performance. And so I think having a stimulant-free pre-workout allows you, or I should say affords you, a little bit more freedom as to what you want to do with what you take the rest of the day. So I quite like it. All right, this question is from at Steffi Jo 2.0. She says, favorite bicep exercises, trying to turn these pistols into guns. So the biceps primarily, of course, is responsible for supination of the wrist,

flexion of the elbow, and flexion of the shoulder. So if you're in the car listening to this, you take your arm up, you turn your pinky in, and you go back towards your ear, and you pull your shoulder up so that your elbow is pointing towards the ceiling or the roof of your car, that's a fully shortened bicep. But to train a muscle optimally, we want to challenge it through its entire contractile range at various positions. So because the bicep does have an action at the shoulder, we need to position the shoulder in different ways. So if we want to challenge the

bicep in the lengthened position, we might do an incline dumbbell curl where our shoulder is extended. It's back behind our torso. And that really will challenge the bicep in the lengthened position. Things like standing hammer curls and, you know, standing dumbbell curls tend to challenge the mid-range really well. Preacher curls, where that shoulder is forward more into what we would call a flex position, they do a really good job of challenging the biceps in that mid-range and some ways in the shortened position. So what I would say is select an exercise that has the arm in extension, back behind the body, at neutral, even with the body, and in flexion, slightly in front of the body and do three different exercises looking to progress them trying to challenge that bicep through the entirety of its functional quote-unquote contractile range that's always a really really good way to think about incorporating

exercises uh with regards to optimizing hypertrophy okay Okay. This question is from at evaldez, and she asks, I think I asked this, but what are your thoughts on eating before training? Should I be? For people who train, like, right when they wake up, I don't think it's a necessity. In general, if you have over 90 minutes to eat a meal, give it time to adequately digest and assimilate, I think that you should eat before

you train. As to what you should eat, I generally recommend a carbohydrate blend of some fructose dominant carbs and glucose dominant carbs. So you can use different pathways for actually getting carbohydrate into tissue because glucose and fructose go into tissue using different pathways. And if you can use different types of carbohydrate, you can use different pathways to hopefully get it in quicker and have a more perhaps truncated access to these carbs. It doesn't all hit you at once, if that makes sense, paired with some protein. So a good example might be a bowl of cereal with some bananas, right? with some bananas, right? You're getting the carbohydrate from the cereal,

which is probably going to be mostly glucose-based, the carbohydrate from the banana, which is going to be mostly fructose-based, and then maybe a whey protein shake on the side for some added protein. Give that 90 minutes to digest, and you should be in the clear, okay? So this is a great question from at thejanester24. For an individual primarily doing weightlifting, how often do you suggest a rest day? So this is a great question from at the Jane Stir 24.

For an individual primarily doing weightlifting, how often do you suggest a rest day? So this really depends on your training age. If you've been training for years, you can go several days in a row without a rest day. If you're new, you might need to take a rest day after each training session. That's usually what I do with most of the clients who I work with who have never lifted before. I give them one to two days in between each training session because when you haven't trained a lot, it takes a while for both the central nervous system and muscle tissue to fully recover from the demands of intense training, right? When you've been training for a really, really long time and you have highly coordinated contractions and your body is extremely good at facilitating, you know,

all of the different motor patterns you're trying to produce with very little waste energy, you know, not so excessive muscle damage, you might be able to train the same movements on back-to-back days with no problems. But where you fall in that continuum is largely going to be tied to how long you've been training, what your systemic or allostatic load is, your total stress load is. If you're super, super stressed with life, work, relationships, all the stuff going on, you might need to take more rest days because training is a stressor. If all you do is train, sleep, and eat, you might not need to take many rest days. So that's kind of how I approach and look at rest days. So here's another great question. This one is from atmarcazo24, and she asked,

best exercises to build the triceps. So we've talked about biceps. Now we're going to talk about triceps. And a lot of the same stuff is going to apply here. So the triceps has three heads and its primary function is elbow extension, but it also contributes a little bit to shoulder extension. So I like to train the triceps in the same way I mentioned, where we can extend the elbow with the arm back behind the body a little bit and shoulder what we would call extension as in a rope extension. we would call extension, as in a rope extension. Maybe a little bit more with that elbow neutral or slightly in front of the midline, like your conventional tricep pushdown or a lot of your pressing movements. And with that elbow in a flexed position where it's up over our head, I really like to do banded work here. I'm not a huge fan of those dumbbell overhead extensions. Those really fry my elbows. Some people quite like those. But again, manipulating the joint angle of the shoulder in an effort to load the various heads of the triceps and give them all an equal chance to get some stimulation.

That's a great way in which to do it. So manipulating the position of the shoulders. Last question is going to be from atbabyk1010. She asks, does it make a huge difference if you count calories and not macros? So again, this all depends on where you're at. If you're brand new to this stuff, and you just want to lose a few pounds and really get in a rhythm with how energy balance works, counting calories generally tends to be fine. Counting macros means you're looking at exactly how many grams of protein,

carbs, and fats you're eating. So that would give you three things specifically to count compared to just one thing. However, if you're counting proteins, carbs, and fats, you're also counting calories, right? Because any application or calculator you would use to do that is also going to compute and equate for total calories. So if your goal isn't just to lose weight, but you want to perform at a high level, you want to look your best, you have a physique goal, I would very much recommend counting macros over counting calories. If you're totally new to this or trying to help a friend who has no idea how energy balance works, I think calories might be a little bit more easy to just be cognizant and aware of. All right, guys, so that does it for today's rapid fire Q&A.

Again, thank you all so much for listening. If you gained anything from this conversation, do me a favor, leave me a five star rating and review on iTunes. If you're one of my Spotify listeners, oh, did you hear that squeak there? I just hit puberty. If you're one of my Spotify listeners, do me a favor, share this to your Instagram story. Do what you can to help me reach as many people as I can. That would be awesome. I really appreciate every single one of you and the relationships that I've formed on this platform. It makes a big difference for me, and that's why I continue to do it. I have been regressing my total output of these down from two to three times a week at the beginning of this pandemic to one because I have a new puppy. But overall, it's something that I'm going to continue to do and I am excited to keep doing. So guys, stay tuned. Please hit that subscribe button. Share if you can. I look forward to doing more of these and keeping in touch with you. And again, if you have questions, don't be afraid. When you see the box on my Instagram, drop them there

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