Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 83 - Health at EVERY Size, Core Training, Boxing, Veggies and MORE!

Episode Date: January 8, 2021

In this episode, Danny discusses the HAES movement, health at every size! How health does not linearly equate to lean and visa versa!  Then, we dive into some of your questions, ranging from home exercises to vegetable intake options!---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:Healthy at EVERY SIZE Movement!  3:11The Bigger Picture to Look At!  10:51“Best exercises at home for abs?”  13:16“What do you suggest for those who do not eat many vegetables?”  16:51“Do you ever do boxing for cardio?”  20:10“Best path to becoming a personal trainer? Bachelor's degree or certification and job?” 22:17Support the Show.

Welcome in everybody to what is a pretty, what I would say otherwise normal episode of the Dynamic Dialogue Podcast. I'm still your normal host, Danny Matranga. We're still going to talk about our normal topics, health, fitness, and wellness, but it does not seem like a super normal day. Today's January 7th, so if you're listening to this, it'll probably be January 8th, Friday, or January 11th, Monday. It's usually when I upload. But yesterday, on the 6th, we had one of the craziest moments in the history of the United States with a kind of riot and ransacking of the United States Capitol building. I understand that everybody's kind of frazzled about it.

Politically, we're quite divided. Ethically, we're divided. Just generally speaking, I don't think there's a moment where the country has been more divided. And I wanted to give you a heads up that if you're looking to get away from that outside of the first one minute of this podcast, the content here is going to try to remain as apolitically as possible. I know we've talked politics in the past when talking about books, and I don't necessarily want to create a political discourse here that might be down the road when things are a little bit less sensitive, people are a little bit less likely to be triggered, people are a little less likely

to want to get away from it all. But I just want to let everybody who's listening know that this is a place, if you want to get away from politics all. But I just want to let everybody who's listening know that this is a place, if you want to get away from politics, regardless of who you voted for, regardless of what you think about certain policies, this is a place you can come, you can listen to the library of fitness and health information

and just, you know, escape from the craziness and give yourself a little bit of a reprieve, learn, improve your physical health, well-being. All of that stuff is here for you. If you're just looking to escape what seems to be the endless political discourse on social media, like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and I'm not saying that this stuff isn't important, and I'm also not saying it's not worthy of being talked about. I talk about it on those platforms, and I talk about it with my friends, I talk about it with my family.

those platforms and I talk about it with my friends. I talk about it with my family, but you know, when I want to step away and really just kind of, um, it's not always political, right? Maybe I'm having drama in my relationship. Maybe I'm having drama with one of my friends. Maybe I'm in drama with one of my clients. Maybe I just need to get away. I like to be able to sink into a nice podcast and a nice book that allows me to detach while still doing something constructive and uplifting. There's a lot of detachable garbage reality television out there where you can sink into The Bachelorette and just disappear or sink into reruns of The Office or Friends and just disappear. And it's nice.

It's definitely a reprieve, but it's not constructive. And I want this podcast to be a place where if you're having a shitty day, things are getting too political, You just want to get away. You want to work on you. You want to improve your understanding of how your body works and your performance. You can flip on an episode of this show and find a little bit of that reprieve, that shelter from the storm. So that's my commitment to you guys. I want this to be a place that you can come and step away and step into a kind of zone where you're working on yourself and you're learning

and it's constructive and it's fun to be here listening to me talk and engage with you guys and your questions. I wanted to actually open today's episode before we dive into the Q&A section, talking about the healthy at any size movement, or I believe it's actually healthy at every size, because I think the acronym is H-A-E-S. I can have my intern look into that, but I'm almost positive it's H-A-E-S, Healthy at Every Size. Or we can call it H-A-A-S, Healthy at Any Size, whatever you want to call it. But it is a movement. And I want to get this right. So I don't want to misrepresent what the movement's all about, because it's super contentious. But I have the kind of mission statement of Healthy at every size right here. And it basically says that the healthy at every size movement promotes acceptance and

appreciation of your body or one's body. Even if you are currently overweight, it encourages overweight people to shift their focus from losing weight to other healthier habits, such as eating healthy foods and getting more exercise. And I actually think that's a, at face value, pretty damn good mission statement. Now, here's what I have noticed in the fitness industry. And I actually think that's a, at face value, pretty damn good mission statement. Now here's what I have noticed in the fitness industry. And I kind of want to break it down psychologically and get some feedback from you if you hear this portion of the podcast and you're like, oh my god, I want to give Danny some input. Shoot me an email.

Shoot me a DM. I might not get back to you, but I might. Because I think this is something that I want to unpack a little bit. And that is why is it that so many fitness professionals and nutrition people feel the desire to really reject or push back on this type of stuff or stuff in this vein. Most recently last week, like first week of the new year, there was a Cosmopolitan magazine page with a woman who I think we could describe as relatively overweight or over fat. She had some body fat, let's put it that way, much more so than you would typically see on a magazine cover. And the caption of the cover read, this is healthy. And that really set off a lot of people in the health and fitness world, understandably so, because we have our idea of what healthy looks like. We tend to all be people who practice relatively healthy habits, like

getting good sleep, staying hydrated, exercising, eating nutritious foods. So, you know, that type of stuff almost seems personal for personal trainers and for nutritionists whose job it has been for many years to help people lose weight because we can say that there is a certain amount of body fat that you can have that isn't healthy for you in the long run. And if you carry a lot of additional body fat, even if some of the markers of health like your blood pressure and maybe your happiness and maybe the way in which you view the world are relatively healthy and complete and holistic, maybe you're experiencing pain and movement dysfunction related to having too much body fat.

And that might be inhibiting you from unlocking your full health, your full potential. And personal trainers and nutritionists are really passionate about helping people do that. But in that same vein, when I've worked with clients, I've often said, hey, you know, weight loss takes a long time. It's never linear. This is something that you're going to have to be committed to for the long run. But in the meantime, can we get a focus on eating healthier food so you can be well nourished

so that you can make sure that you're not deficient in any micronutrients or macronutrients or valuable vitamins, minerals, polyphenols, stuff that is going to help you be healthy? And can we try to get in the habit of moving and exercising and increasing your strength and building muscle and increasing your mobility, expanding your range of motion, making day to day tasks easier? Can we focus on that? That's a great mission. That is something that I've done with so many clients.

And for a lot of people, focusing on that, right, focusing on that is an amazing place to start your fitness journey. And it's certainly probably a lot more likely to keep you motivated and inspired than focusing on the scale because any good trainer, any good nutritionist, any good dietitian is going to know that weight loss is very rarely linear. And for most people, it's going to bounce up and down. And if that is all you're focused on or all you're focused on is what you want to look like, you're more than likely to be disappointed because in reality, substantial weight loss takes time. It takes education. It takes forming habits. It takes being consistent. And people aren't very good at that these days. You know, these are skills that we have kind of societally regressed

on. We're not super, super patient people by nature anymore. We want things to be instantaneous and we want them to be easier because we're conditioned to be that way. Or we've become more conditioned to be that way. And I think that at face value, what most trainers want to do and what supposedly, according to Scientific American's iteration of what healthy at every size means, I think those two things can coexist. But I think where the frustration comes, and again, correct me if I'm wrong, is I believe that there may be a media glorification of these bodies in an effort to perhaps walk back some of the almost unattainable and oftentimes truly unattainable physiques that we've seen on magazine covers for both men and

women, physiques of genetically really gifted people who are very disciplined with their diet that may or may not have even been photoshopped. Like, perhaps this is the pendulum swinging the other way and saying, hey, you know, what you're seeing on magazines your whole life isn't realistic. This is what people really look like. And this can be healthy. And, you know, trainers see that and go, hey, you know, we might be glorifying, not just trainers, health and fitness professionals in general, we might be glorifying something here that isn't ideal and probably isn't, you know, at least on its face, as healthy as being a little bit less or having a little bit less body fat, right? We can't make assumptions about what somebody's mental health is or is not. We can't make, we can certainly operate from the same set of facts that having

too much body fat or having too little body fat are both very unhealthy. Having too little body fat comes with a whole slew of issues. And if it coincides with an eating disorder, that's a psychological issue in and of itself. So there's a lot there too. We don't want to have that argument because that's something that I have heard a lot, which is, hey, you know, being too skinny isn't good for you either. Absolutely not. And there are a lot of people

in the health and fitness industry who live their life really, really lean, got a really low body fat and deal with the punishing effects of having low energy, low libido, low metabolic output and having to eat very little food to maintain that physique or take a lot of drugs to maintain that physique. And that's not

my definition of health. I would rather be 10 pounds overweight, probably. And I would imagine that my long-term health would probably be better because I'd at least be enjoying food. Let's not create the false dichotomy here that you're either anorexic, too thin, have an eating disorder, you know, or, you know, you're fixated on not eating anything versus you're morbidly obese. There's a lot of gray area here. And I think we can say that the healthiest body is probably somewhere in between those two poles.

And I think that the healthy at any size movement in an effort to gain traction and get people talking and even get people debating, there are visuals, magazine covers, that draw reactions from people, that are designed to draw reactions from people. We maybe attack the person on the cover inappropriately, or we attack the magazine for putting this out there and saying that it's an unhealthy glorification of a body that's got too much weight. Or on the flip side, this is amazing to see somebody who looks like me or isn't looking like your typical cover model. We dive down those rabbit holes and I think the people who produce these magazines or Instagram posts or things like this, they know that's what's going to happen. magazines or Instagram posts or things like this, they know that's what's going to happen. The best type of exposure you can get is something that's going to get people talking and sharing your product on social media. And that's pretty much what all this shit is. And so I think it's just really, really important that we stop debating the minutia of the media portrayal of the healthy

at any size movement or healthy at every size movement. And look at some of these principles that I don't think at face value are terrible. I used to rail against this all the time, but like, Hey, per the website, you know, healthy at every size, whatever the hell that means, whatever this websites or, or reserved to tag me, you know, celebrating diversity in body seems legit there. We don't all look the same. We don't have all of the genetics to look the same. That's not a hot take. That's not radical. Honors, differences in size, age, race, ethnicity, gender, disability, orientation, religion, class. Cool. I get it. Sociology affects fitness. Sociology affects healthcare. Sociology affects nutrition and access to all the above. I'm with it. I get it. I'm not delusional.

That's fair. Challenges, scientific and cultural assumptions. We must always do that. That is, in fact, the goal of science. Values, body knowledge, and lived experience. Okay, cool. We're taking the person into account here. So, you know, this stuff doesn't seem terrible. We don't need to be as divided as we are on this stuff. We don't need to glorify the hyper-thin and drugged out. We don't need to deitize the fit. And we certainly don't need to glorify people who are clearly living life with the excess of body fat that may be detrimental to their long-term health.

I don't think that's a hot take. And I think a lot of this provocateuring that these magazines do and a lot of these influencers do to drive discussion here, it's just a way to, you know, pit divisiveness into the industry, get people talking, get people divided on something. And it's largely innocuous, I think, but I don't think we need to rail against it, I should say, any more than we already do. Definitely not right now, given everything that's going on. 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. Let's go ahead and get into the Q&A, guys. First question, best exercises at home for abs. This is from Miles Haas, at mileshaas on Instagram. So let's chat for a second about the function of the core, because when you hear best ab exercise, I usually think six-pack, and so we will talk about that. We'll talk about the six-pack, the rectus abdominis specifically, but when we talk about that. We'll talk about the six-pack, the rectus abdominis specifically, but when we talk about ab training and we talk about core training, we're talking about two different

things, at least as the way we use currently the term abs to generally refer to the rectus abdominis. So we'll talk about that first. The core has many functions. One of them is spinal flexion or bending as in a crunch. That is the primary job of the rectus abdominis. If you want to develop your rectus abdominis, some form of weighted crunch tends to be good. I like banded crunches, which you can do from home. They're an iteration of the cable crunch, which I prefer even more. And I really like crunches on an exercise ball, Swiss ball, yoga ball, whatever you want to call it. Those are my two favorites by far as far as spinal flexion ab training designed to hit the six pack goes. So if you're not doing those, add those in. If you're lean enough, you will probably see a pretty solid change in your six pack area from doing those and progressing them over the course of weeks and months. Now, as far as the rest of the core goes, we got to talk about the other functions. One of them is anti-extension, right? We're generally talking about hyper extension of the spine, particularly the lumbar spine. So planks are a really good anti-extension exercise and stir the

pots, which are a more dynamic version of effectively the same position. We're just trying to maintain the same position on an unstable object. So there's a degree of perturbation going on there. We're talking about doing a plank on a Swiss ball or a yoga ball. If you've never done a stir the pot, those are my go-to core movements for anti-extension. We also have lateral flexion, right, and rotational components of the core. Lateral flexion or anti-lateral flexion is going to be things like side bends, which I don't love, right, that's literally lateral flexion. I prefer anti-lateral flexion work like farmer's carries or suitcase carries. So those are the exercises I'll tag when I want to train the anti-lateral

flexion function of the core. If you want to train rotation, you can do dynamic work like med balls, like med ball throws, med ball rotational tosses. If you want to train anti-rotation elements as well as something like glute mean, some dynamic positioning, you can do things like payload press or payload walks, where we're resisting rotation and there's elements of resisted rotation. So training your core, um, represents training the multiple different functions of the musculature in the core, right? We have different muscles in different positions that run in different angles that do different things. Your core is not one muscle. Your abs are not one muscle. They're commonly referred to. The six-pack, the rectus

abdominis, the spinal flexion component of the core, is often called the abs. So if you want to really carve out a nice-looking six-pack, you want to develop the rectus abdominis. That's not rocket science. But if you want to function well for either sport or just general athletic endeavors, any endeavors you may have, having a strong core is probably a good idea. So having some multifaceted core training is pretty important. Okay, next question, also from Instagram, from at Michaela Becker. She asks, what do you suggest for those who don't eat many vegetables? Okay, so vegetables are important for a variety of reasons. One of those reasons is that they have fiber, fiber that helps feed the microbiota of our gut and having a relatively high fiber intake is good for digestion and nutrient assimilation. dense foods available, specifically cruciferous green and dark colored vegetables, which leads

me to the last piece that we really want to highlight, which is things like polyphenols or compounds unique to plants that are high in things like anti-inflammatory and antioxidant compounds that can be good. But if you don't get enough vegetables, you might be missing out on some of these components of nutrition that are really, really important for good quality health. So where else can you get these things? Well, fiber and micronutrients are also very much available in fruit. You can eat a lot of fruit. Now, fruit does tend to have more calories and a little bit less fiber than vegetables. Because think about how fruit has evolved. Fruit is effectively a seed-carrying mechanism. Like, plants have evolved fruit to be sugary and taste good so that animals will eat it and then shit it out and a new plant will grow. And the irony there, of course,

is that when you poop out a strawberry seed, it's already fertilized. So that is the brilliance of fruit. Fruit is designed to help plants replicate and spread and grow new plants. Veggies, on the other hand, kind of work the same way in theory. Most of them don't have any seeds. Some do, but they're certainly not as tasty. So you have to be somewhat aware of the caloric intake of fruit, although it's definitely quite low. And I don't worry too much about fruit sugar because of the fiber and the micronutrients that we're getting. We also get a lot of those same polyphenols. Now, if you are somebody who's macro conscious and you don't want to eat a ton of fruit, the fiber and the just natural filling way vegetables have to impact the diet, they're very satiating. You should eat some vegetables. If you don't want to eat them, you can juice them. Although, again, you won't be getting the fiber that way. Or you can blend them into something like a smoothie.

While you'll still get the fiber, you won't necessarily get all the same effects. Because a lot of the chewing has been done by the blender. And as a worst case scenario, and this is something I take every day. Because I'm not very good at getting three to four servings of vegetables a day. Is a greens powder. And a greens powder is something that you can easily just go ahead and scoop into a protein shake or again, add to a smoothie. And that stuff works really, really well. And it's very, very easy to implement into your routine. And the greens powder that I take is Legion's Genesis. And Legion is my favorite sports supplement company. They're a

supporter of me and a supporter of the show. So if you want to get your hands on some Legion Genesis, you can go to legionathletics.com, buy some Genesis, use the code DANNY at the checkout, and save some money. I don't get paid to endorse any of these products. I just want you guys to make sure that you get your hands on the best quality stuff on the market. So at that fly guy asks, do you ever do boxing for cardio? And I really don't. I have in the past done a little bit of kickboxing. One of the trainers I used to work with was a pretty good kickboxing instructor. So I tried that for a little while for fun. It's cool. I'm not a particularly violent person, so it's not the first thing that comes to mind when I think about exercising. Not that you need to be violent to want to hit things, but again, it's just not super front of mind for me when I think about doing aerobic exercise. But that doesn't mean I don't think it is a great form of aerobic exercise. I actually do. I think it's really fun.

think it is a great form of aerobic exercise. I actually do. I think it's really fun. You can do it as a more continuous type of training where you incorporate things like jumping rope or shadow boxing, or you can do it in the form of HIIT training where maybe you work the heavy bag for one minute on, a couple minutes off, and you really get into those higher echelons of conditioning. Martial arts combat training in general lends itself pretty well for aerobic conditioning and even some forms of anaerobic training. So I think in general, it's a great type of fitness. But working the heavy bag can be pretty debilitating on the shoulders, upper traps for some people from just the degree of staying in that position with your hands up that can be quite fatiguing.

So it can get you, it can definitely make you sore if you haven't hit that bag for a while. But I think it's a good conditioning tool. Yeah. And I actually just, I think in general, wish more people would use it because I think it's a fun way of sneaking in some caloric expenditure. And as a trainer, I've always enjoyed doing a little bit of mitt work with my clients, right? Where they're just hitting the gloves and, you know, we're maybe doing a jab cross or a work with my clients, right? Where they're just hitting the gloves and, you know, we're maybe doing a jab cross or a jab cross uppercut and just working some really basic combos. I find that people really, really enjoy it. They have a ton of fun doing it, right? It's

really low key. You can teach people some very, very, very simple stuff. Um, and they can get, you know, feel like they're kicking ass in like 10 minutes of instruction. And it's always been a cool thing to incorporate with some of my clients, particularly my older clients and my female clients. They really seem to like it. Okay, so last question is from at Rebecca Deardek. And she asks, best path to becoming a personal trainer, bachelor's degree or certification and job? There's two ways to look at this. So to get the specific knowledge, you need to be a successful personal trainer. You don't need to go to school. You can get a certification, an internship, maybe shadow a couple of good trainers. If you have a kind of insatiable

desire to learn about things that you're passionate about, that will really help too. Because again, a lot of what I do is available for you free on the internet, or you can get more certifications to expand that specific knowledge from people like N1 Education, CPPS Coaches. I've done FRC. I've done pretty much everything through NASM, through ACE, Nutritional Coaching Institute. A lot of this shit comes to mind. I've done pretty much every cert in the book, and I've learned quite a bit. I've also learned a ton listening to podcasts like my own, Stronger by Science, Iron Culture. I listen to stuff like this, too. I do a lot of audiobooks. side of the ivory tower or not locked in institutionalized collegiate education is more than enough to help you be successful as far as specific knowledge goes. But general knowledge and the procedural lines of thinking that come with conventional higher levels of education, and particularly right now, university-level education, the general body of knowledge you need to get a bachelor's degree isn't entirely useless. It will help you connect with people. It will help you better understand people.

It will help you do a better job of quite possibly managing your schedule, particularly if you are a younger person. If I could do it all over again, I'd do exactly what I did, which was going to school for kinesiology while working as a personal trainer. I paid my way through school. I ended up making enough money working to support myself and live a really nice lifestyle as a college student. You know, I drove a nice car. I was able to wear clothes that I wanted and buy things that I wanted. I didn't live like a typical broke college student. And every year as I grew more as a coach, I got more clients and I did better in school because I was able to kind of understand how this stuff works in the real world. And it kept me hungry. And then when I was learning at school, I would take like when I was taking anatomy and working into a lot of kind of the

nuts and bolts stuff, I would take what I had learned in lecture and apply it on my clients right there at work. So it was like every day I had an eight hour functional lab of different clients where I was like, Hey, this muscle right here that we're working, that's called your serratus anterior, and it works to protract and stabilize the shoulder. A lot of cool stuff, and I was putting it to work right away. So if you have the ability to do both, I absolutely would do so. That'll do it for today's episode, guys. Thank you so much for listening. Again, if you just need to escape and get away from all the craziness of the world, for listening. Again, if you just need to escape and get away from all the craziness of the world, that is what this podcast is here for. I like to do as many Q&As as possible. But like I said,

a couple episodes ago, I'm doing my due diligence and reaching out again to get people on the show for interviews, people that I think will bring you value, other coaches, other health and fitness experts, PhD credentials, you know, know-it-alls about things that really will help you expand your health, wellness, and performance. So I'll see you guys on the next episode. Have a good one, stay safe, and enjoy 2021's crazy first week.