Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 82 - Q+A, New Years Resolutions, Metabolic Adaptations, Rest Days + MORE

Episode Date: December 31, 2020

In this episode, Danny gives some tips on how to ACTUALLY reach your goals! Then we dive into some of your questions before 2020 wraps up for good, from healthy lifestyle changes to home exercise substitutes. Happy New Year!Make sure to submit your questions HERE to get them answered in the next Q&A!---Thanks For Listening!---RESOURCES/COACHING: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:2021: No GUARANTEES! Create Habits, reach your GOALS!  3:17REACH YOUR GOALS: Write it down, break it up!  6:15Move in Silence. Stop talking, start doing.  7:50“Rest days, why are they important?”  10:12“How do you ‘heal’ your metabolism from dieting?”  15:20“Seated cable row alternative?”  19:46“I sweat a lot when I take creatine, is that normal?”  22:27“Would you rather buy a cable machine or keiser bike?”  23:15“Blue light glasses?”  23:44“Your advice for someone with hyper-mobile joints but want to lift heavy!”  25:39Support the Show.

Welcome, everybody, to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. Not just any other episode, though. This is going to be the last episode of 2020. And what a crazy year it has been. It's almost ironic to look back and remember that I released this podcast originally for its first ever episode to be downloaded in the first week of March of this year, which coincides kind of exactly with when the whole coronavirus pandemic lockdown quarantine stuff really kicked off and really sent this year as we know it down a path that I think none of us really saw coming. No matter what you feel

about the virus, no matter where you stand on the spectrum of the unfortunate politicization of the virus, I think we can all sit back and say that in March of 2020, we definitely didn't think it would have this big of an impact on our day-to-day lives, on our workouts, on a myriad of ways that it's affected us. Many of us have lost loved ones. Many of us have lost jobs. Many of our work looks different than it did before. So it's certainly been a year of crazy, crazy, crazy changes. And this podcast kind of dropped right in the middle of all of it. And I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you all to everybody who listens, to everybody who subscribed, to everybody who continues to download the episodes. You guys have given me something to do, something to focus on.

You've helped me grow and expand my business and better connect with people through this type of platform. with people through this type of platform. It's certainly what I do for work is one of those things that I think we can all call the definition of a luxury expense. Having a trainer, having a coach is a luxury. And a lot of you guys have decided to work with me or stuck with me or stuck with the podcast or continue to follow the content when there hasn't necessarily been a clear path to what your next series of workouts are going to look like. Or, you know, everything's been up in the air, has not been normal. And I am eternally grateful for every single one of you sticking with me, whether that's in some form of business as a client, whether you're listening to the podcast, whether you're interacting with me on Instagram, it's really been awesome. 2020 has shown me just how fortunate I am to be able to reach and connect with people like you who listen to the podcast. And so, you know, don't think this is some blanket, just catch all gratitude thing.

Like you right here, whoever you are listening to this, you've made a difference in my life. You've made it better by following along and contributing to sharing or taking in my content. And I am extremely grateful for you. And today we're going to talk all about some of the common pitfalls that kind of coincide with resolutions and setting goals, especially as we get closer to the new year, because this is always something that we want to attack. It's something that we want to work on. It's something that's extremely common. And I want to share a tweet with you guys today that I wrote. And what I typed was the only thing that will for sure change in 2021 is the date, right? The only thing that we can guarantee we'll do differently next

year, as it stands right now here on the 29th of December when I'm recording this, is that we're going to write 2021 instead of 2020. But just because it's a new year doesn't mean we're guaranteed new outcomes. New habits, new commitments, and new behaviors create new outcomes. Just because you bought a new planner doesn't mean you've guaranteed a new you. So the new year is really interesting in that we look at it as this clean slate. It's an opportunity to start fresh. It's extremely appetizing to our reptilian brain where shit is broken and we just want to start from scratch.

Sometimes it's easier to start over than it is to go backwards, right? One of the things I like to think about is it's one thing to get halfway up the mountain and know you have to come all the way back down and then go up a different way. That's pretty challenging, right? Instead, a lot of people would rather say, well, I made it pretty high. I'll just climb a new mountain and start over, right?

Blow it up, clean slate. That's what we like to do. It's this extremely unique thing that humans have a tendency to want to do. And it is really, really enticing to say on one one 2021, everything's going to be different. Everything's going to change. I'm going to leave all this stuff behind me. But for now, I still have two more days to do fuck all and mess around and do and create and be who I was all of 2020 that didn't necessarily connect me with who I wanted to be. And maybe you've done

some personal growth. I know for a fact I have. And I think that the difficulty of 2020, the challenges that it's kind of forced upon all of us have really created a nice opportunity for growth. It really has. Many of us have grown, whether it's emotionally, intellectually, getting more connected with ourselves, maybe working on our mental health, maybe finding new novel ways that we can enhance our physical health, maybe working to maintain our relationships more than we did before because it's not as easy when we don't see each other all the time in person. Lots of good stuff has come from this. I'm not saying 2021 is going to be some magical, less crappy year. It might be just as crappy. And it's not to say

that 2020 was a wash and that there was nothing positive. I think from the stress and the challenge, a lot of us actually got stronger and improved our lives in many different ways. But with regards to making changes and improving our life in 2021, the stuff that we really want to work on, just want to remind you that none of that is going to change just by saying this is what I want to do. Like I want to start meditating, I want to start investing. Identifying goals is step one. But creating habits to help those goals come to fruition is what's most important, right? So what you're what you're going to end up doing, right, like what you're going to end up creating is not a direct reflection of what you said

you want to do. It's a direct reflection of what you actually went out and did, right? So some tips, write stuff down, write your goals down where you can see them. I like to split them into three categories, weekly goals, monthly goals, and annual goals. So let's say that my big goal this year is to save $100,000. We're just going to use a 100,000 because it's an easy number. And I say, okay, well, what's my $100,000 goal divided into 12 months? Well, I have to save up approximately $8,000 a month, right? Or approximately $1,800 every week. Now, that's not necessarily easy, right? Like that's all relative. But what's easier to break down and create an action item around

$1,800 a week, or $100,000 over the course of a year. It might be fluid, but it's much easier to break stuff down into something that's digestible. So let's use weight loss as an example. Maybe you want to lose 50 pounds. That's five pounds or so a month, right? Four or five pounds a month. It's one pound a week. There you go. Right there. So take your goals, write that shit down, but don't write down, oh, at the end of the year, I'm going to be a millionaire. That's not how it works. You have to break it down into habits that you can do on a monthly, weekly, and hopefully

daily basis. The daily stuff adds up to the weekly stuff. The weekly stuff adds up to the monthly stuff. And obviously, you see where I'm going with this. The monthly stuff is going to add up to all the change you want at the end of the year. But it all comes down to behavior. Another tip I have for you is to stop walking around and telling people what you're doing. Don't tell people you're going to do this, I'm going to do that, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that. That creates this strange sense of accomplishment. And that just sharing

your goals literally makes people think that they're doing shit because you tell somebody and you go, oh, you know, this year I'm going to lose 50 pounds. I'm super set on it. January 1st, I'm throwing all the sugar and junk out of the house. I'm going to totally overhaul everything. You go keto. And then your friends go, oh my gosh, that's so awesome. Good for you. I'm so proud of you. Like people are going to tell you that they're proud of you for just sharing your goals. That's not really what you want. You don't want the feedback. You don't want the positivity until you've actually done something. You don't want to set yourself up so that just telling people your goals is giving you

the dopamine hit that you want from reaching them. Because then what you end up doing is when you don't reach your goals, you feel like you've let people down, right? Oh man, I told all those people what I was going to do. And a lot of people go, well, of course I told all those people it's going to hold me more accountable. It doesn't work that way. Not in my experience, not working with people. I haven't seen that to work. I think it's better to work on your goals in silence. they actually reach out to you and go hey how's that weight loss goal going hey i wanted to remind you that you told me you wanted to lose some weight and last night i saw you you know how to eat at the cheesecake factory balls deep into reese's you know a slice of reese's cheesecake that ain't in alignment with what you want to accomplish i'm here to hold you accountable tell

the right people don't tell everybody keep it simple right practice your habits every single day break it down into the smallest, most convenient steps possible because that's the shit that adds up. It's all about compounding interest. Small habits compound into massive change. Remember that. Hey guys, just wanted to take a quick second to say thanks so much for listening to the podcast. And if you're finding value, it would mean the world to me if you would share it on your social media. Simply screenshot whatever platform you're listening to and share the episode to your Instagram story or share it to Facebook. But be sure to tag me so I can say

thanks and we can chat it up about what you liked and how I can continue to improve. Thanks so much for supporting the podcast and enjoy the rest of the episode. With all of that out of the way, let's talk a little bit about what you guys are looking to accomplish and what you guys need help with from my Instagram Q&A. So the first question is from Riss Meg and she asks rest days and why they are important. So when we talk about a rest day, we're primarily talking about giving the body and the central nervous system a chance to recover from training when we lift heavy weights we break down skeletal muscle we put stress on our bones tendons and soft tissues and all of that stuff needs time to repair and grow back stronger it's not uncommon to hear people say things like you don't grow in the gym, you actually grow from the recovery you do.

And rest days are an awesome opportunity for us to recover and to step away from training. Another element of the physiology, right, of the biomechanical model, not just the mechanical model, we're not just bones and muscles, we are a brain too, is the central nervous system. And the central nervous system, right like the brain, spinal cord, all of the different extensions of the spinal cord that tell our muscles to contract on command to lift heavy weights, that stuff gets beat down from training too. When you put a big heavy barbell on the ground and pick it up, or you put a big heavy barbell on your back and you squat it down and up,

that is stressing your central nervous system. Your body is going, holy smokes, I have to use a lot of energy to contract a lot of tissue under a lot of load to move this stuff. And your central nervous system fatigues much in the same way that your muscles, bones, and tendons do. And it also needs time to recover, right? So rest days are really good for that as well. But let's also talk about perhaps some of the psychological benefits of the rest day. When we talk about the central nervous system, we're talking about the brain, but more of the brain's function as to how it relates to movement, not how it functions psychologically. Going into the gym every day and training every day is not necessarily ideal for getting the best out of your sessions.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Sometimes stepping away is a really good way to get excited and really go in and crush your next workout. I often have seen people, especially back when I used to work in corporate gyms, who worked out seven days a week every day at the same time, and they never made any fucking progress. And I'd always ask, do you ever take a day off? And they go, oh, no, I couldn't take a day off. I need to work out. It's like, okay, maybe you do, but you also want to get results and never taking a rest day is a one-way ticket to having crappy workout after crappy workout after crappy workout. And one of the things I remember reading early on in my

weightlifting career was that a lot of the Mr. Olympias, a lot of the best bodybuilders in the world, they actually did something really, really interesting. And that was that after the competition, some of them took a full week or a full month off of weightlifting. And I remember thinking to myself as a kid or a younger man, how could anybody take a week or a month off of lifting? That's crazy. I can barely take a day because I had a hard time at that point in my career with rest days. And then I realized, hey, when you're one of the best bodybuilders in the world, you've probably figured out some shit that works for you with regards to recovery. Pardon my French. And if taking a month off after destroying your body with training and dieting and starving to get super lean is what it takes

to get back in the saddle to be able to do it again year after year after year, that's what it takes. And we should learn from the body of anecdotal evidence that's out there. The people who know the most about building muscle and performing know a lot about recovery. And this isn't just for aesthetic sports. Think about strength sports, right? Lots of recovery time, periodization and models with regards to how we train linearly across multiple years so we can hit a podium every four years in the Olympics, right? You've got to train for four years to hit like one lift. You bake the recovery into all that. So rest days are really important to keeping you motivated and reaching your overall goal.

And it also gives you time that you're not working out that you can use for things like meal prepping, because while working out is really important, there are some fundamental keystone habits like sleeping and eating the right types of food that will help you reach your performance or physique goals much more quickly. And you know, a 20 minute commute to and from the gym mixed with an hour and a half workout, that's two hours. And that comes out to like 14 hours a week. But if you can get two hours back that you were normally spending at the gym, and you spend that on meal prepping, maybe you spend that programming for your next workout. Maybe you spend it talking to your coach on the phone

or talking to your coach via email about what you want to attack. I think that there are way more benefits to taking regular rest days than there are to working out every single day. And I truly, truly believe that because just a rest day doesn't necessarily mean you're completely sedentary.

You can still do things like mobility, getting outside, going on walks. There's a lot of stuff that you can really work on. And for those of us who like to move, who like to stay active, the prospect of a rest day is almost like, oh, well, what am I going to do? I'm an active person. Don't think about it that way. It's a day to give your central nervous system, muscle tissue, bones, and tendons a break from all of the damage that you put it through during the week and to help you reset and become more motivated

about training. I think it's a really, really good idea to take your rest days seriously and work on them. All right. So next question is from Caitlin O'Neill 11. And she says, how do you heal your metabolism from dieting? So let's first talk about verbiage and word choice. I'll give you an example. If you call something a cheat meal, it has the implication that you've cheated. And cheating does something to us, right? Cheating is a negative word. We don't like it.

It means you broke the rules. A free meal is something that denotes, hey, you got a break. You got to have whatever meal you wanted and you didn't cheat. You didn't break the rules. It was a free meal. So that's an example of a word choice that might take what is effectively the same decision in context and give it a very, very different appeal when it comes to actually putting it into practice.

give it a very, very different appeal when it comes to actually putting it into practice. Now, when we use the phrase heal a metabolism after dieting, we're kind of inferring that something is broken, right? Because when you heal, you are healing something that's damaged or broken. I don't like to refer to a metabolism as something that's broken or even something that's damaged. Metabolic changes, meaning how much your metabolism down-regulates after a long period of dieting, is better off, in my opinion, referred to as metabolic adaptation, not metabolic damage. Damage infers something's broken, and a lot of things that get broken can't be fixed. But we know from the literature that going back to maintenance calories for a long enough period of time can help reverse almost all if not every single bit of the metabolic adaptation that we have as a species in response to being in too long of a caloric deficit you tracking okay so

that's kind of a big deal first we actually look at what it is that we're calling this stuff and what the word choice we're using is going to have as far as an impact on our ability to make change. And so you don't heal your metabolism from dieting, right? You allow it to go back to baseline after it's adapted to a new caloric intake. So the best thing that you can do is to go back to maintenance calories. And there are two ways to do this. You can either go back all at once, which is what I recommend for people who are noticing really, really profound negative implications from being in a deficit. You can go right back to a newly calculated estimated maintenance calories. Or you can do a slower

return to those maintenance calories, which we would call a reverse diet where you slowly work in more food. But the best way to fix it is to go back to eating a little bit more food. Understand that there probably will be some associated body fat gain, water retention, scale weight increase. Do be certain that you're getting your rest days, right? These two questions, the previous question and this question really go together nicely and you should be fine. Avoid telling yourself that your metabolism is damaged or that your metabolism is broken. That's not necessarily a good thing to say because again, you're kind of forming your own path with that. You're effectively telling yourself that you're screwed, that you're broken and that you can't get anything done until you're fixed. And that's not true. You can still have very effective training,

you can build strength all whilst returning to maintenance calories, and getting that metabolic adaptation to subside. But you know, the body's a pretty intelligent organism and knows when you've restricted calories for a really long time that it's got to get used to living, surviving, and performing all of its daily maintenance work in those constraints. So going back to maintenance will fix it, but it's not instantaneous. You might have to be in maintenance for 1, 2, 6, 12 months. The longer that you were in a deficit, more than likely the longer you will need to be in maintenance to walk back some of those metabolic adaptations. But you're certainly not broken and you're certainly not going to be the type of person, because this is the thing that we're afraid of happening. As a woman diets on 1200 calories, she gets really, really thin.

And then the minute she eats 1250 calories, she just starts gaining fat. 1300, she just balloons up. Her body is completely locked into that 1200 calorie range. That's not necessarily true. But that's the thing that, you know, when you hear the phrase metabolic adaptation, that's the scary thing. I shouldn't say metabolic adaptation, right? I should say metabolic damage. That's the scary implication, right? That you'll never be able to go back to normal.

And that's just not what the research shows. And that's not what I have seen in practice. Okay, so this question is from Genevieve Quibod, and she asks, seated cable row alternative. So assuming you're working out from home, when we talk about the cable row, it is a horizontal, right, rowing or horizontal pulling variation. And it's a really effective tool for targeting the mid back and upper back, particularly like the lower traps, we get a lot of scapular retraction. So we get some rhomboids, depending on the handle you use, you might get some rare delts, you're certainly going to get some form of lats worked in there, right? All good stuff. But it's hard to replicate because cables are relatively

consistent with their resistance profile. Bands, like a seated banded row, everything in the same position might feel similar, but it's exponentially more difficult in the shortened position when we've got the band stretched out more and our shoulders have started to retract and the handle is close to our body than it is in the lengthened position where the band is, you know, doesn't have as much tension. Cable is pretty consistent from lengthened to shortened. So it's a good substitution, but I don't think it's the best. I do like a TRX row. I think that that is a fantastic option as far as replicating that horizontal pulling pattern and getting a resistance profile that's still kind of tough. So I would say that banded rows and TRX rows in tandem might be a good way to replicate the

seated cable row with the equipment that most people probably have access to at home. Because I got to remember that most people don't necessarily have a gym right now. And I really try to take that into account when I make this podcast. And again, this is a very similar question from the same person asking for a lying leg curl alternative. And when we talk about lying leg curls, we're really, really talking mostly about flexion of the knee, right? So we're lying flat on our stomach and we're flexing the knee, just like a bicep curl, bringing the heel closer to the body. And that's really, really hard to replicate. The closest thing I could think of would be like a hamstring slider where you put your feet under two towels and slide them back towards your bum while laying on a surface like tile or laminate

flooring that allows for that because we're still getting that knee flexion. We're not in that position where we're laying on our tummy. Instead, we're laying on our back, but it's pretty similar and it's probably the closest thing you'll get. I really, really like Nordic hamstring curls. That's an awesome option that you can do from home. Probably better than the one I just mentioned, but it is a little bit more difficult. Okay. I underscore am underscore J underscore black asks, I sweat a lot when I take creatine. Is that normal? I can't say for sure that it's normal, but what we do know about creatine is this. It does have a propensity to create water retention in the body, right? Creatine loves to bring some water in with it. So

if you're somebody who drinks a lot of water, you start taking creatine, you're going to hold even more water. When you start exercising, your body will probably be more likely to perspire and sweat. That would be my best guess as to why that happens. And I wouldn't look too much more into it than that. Seems pretty intuitive. And it seems to make quite a bit of sense. Okay. If you had to purchase. This is from Jazzy underscore Fit Mom.

If you had to purchase a cable machine versus a Kaiser bike. Which would you choose? Cable machine for sure. I think that Kaiser bikes are dope. Any type of aerobic exercise is dope, but it's pretty easy to get aerobic activity, even higher threshold aerobic work done with almost no equipment. It's almost impossible to replicate some of what you can get out of a cable with most other forms of equipment. So I would be all over the cable if you're a person who's choosing between those two

things. All right. Next question from at Darth Jordan. She says, blue light glasses research is mixed. It is mixed, but there is quite a bit of emerging positive research to show that blocking blue light from hitting your retina, which then travels into the brain and hits the suprachiasmatic nucleus and kind of tells our body whether it's day and night, right? Those blue blocking glasses can really limit how much blue light hits our retina and can throw off our circadian rhythm. And there is research to support their efficacy. And while there is probably research that would maybe contrast just how effective it

might be, I think that you can get a pair of these for a fairly reasonable price and at least try it out. I know for me, they definitely seem to help. They really help if I have something like a headache too. So I use them for different things. If I have a headache, I'll toss them on. If I'm going to be on my computer for a long time, I'll toss them on. If I'm watching my television or playing my PlayStation late into the night, I will toss them on. There's a lot of utility here. And I think the mechanism by which they go about working is easy to understand i can wrap my head around it um and the price that it would cost to get a pair of these glasses is relatively inexpensive you can get a pretty good pair on amazon for between

20 to 40 dollars if you want a beautiful good looking pair of frames with a really high quality lens that isn't bright orange and doesn't make you look like you're you know in the x-men you might have to pay probably closer to a hundred dollars um but you know i don't know where you're at financially i feel like that might be a really good cost to benefit trade-off with regards to improving your sleep which can improve your performance and your body composition and potentially being able to manage things like headaches so i like them i wouldn't tell anybody to buy them unless they were in a position financially where it made sense. But hey, $30 to $40 is in a lot of people's wheelhouse. So it's something that we can absolutely consider as an effective intervention for improving sleep

and getting better recovery. All right. So this question is from DreGale777. Your advice for somebody who has hypermobile joints, but wants to lift heavy. So hypermobile joints are joints that can hyperextend super, super easily. And so one of the things I would be very cautious of as somebody who has hypermobility and quite a few joints, don't hyperextend at the top of squats and at the top of heavy presses, particularly with the knees and elbows. Um, that's a big cause of issue for myself. Really. I can have a tendency to hyper extend my elbows or do that double jointed thing when I lock out my bench press.

So I try not to do that. And that has really, really helped my, uh, elbow pain over the years. Another thing that I would look at is just improving overall stability, right? So stability and mobility kind of exist on inverse planes of the same axis. So whereas stability helps lock things up, mobility helps things move more freely. And for somebody who has no problem with mobility, doing more isolated specific stability work might really help you with performance. Controlling your tempo is also a really good idea. Staying in active ranges of motion is also a really good idea too. So not dropping down into a passive range of motion for people who are hyper mobile. You might find that it's really, really hard to kind of determine where that passive range of

motion or active range of motion ends and passive range of motion starts. So just controlling lifts through the entire range of motion and asking yourself, am I bottoming out here or am I actively, eccentrically loading myself into this lengthened position? So just be cognizant while you lift, but really work on stability work and really be cautious about hyperextension, especially whilst loading, because you might not necessarily notice issues right away, but down the road, you might start to notice some cranky soft tissue stuff flare up. So guys, that will do it. Again, this is the last episode of the year. Thank you all so, so much for listening, for tuning in, for sharing, for subscribing subscribing i'm so grateful i

said i would do more podcasting to close out the year i did not deliver on that promise i'd like to make the promise to do more podcasting at 2021 and get back to having guests on um i had a hard time booking guests because i just wasn't super engaged with reaching out to them. I wanted to do the podcast solo after front-loading a lot of guests, but next year I really want to get back to having more guests on the podcast so I can bring you some of the experts I have in my relationship repertoire and some of the people that I have in my circle that I think will really, really help you. So you guys have an awesome new year. Be safe.

Don't drink and drive. Don't do anything crazy. And again, write down those goals, set deliberate action, and get those habits kicking early. And I will see you in the new year.