Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 93 - Q&A Butt Stuff, Deloads, and Recovery

Episode Date: March 17, 2021

In this episode, Danny dives into your questions! We touch base on everything from recovery tips to cutting body fat to deloading in training programs! All training programs are on sale right now! Take advantage of this deal HERE!---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:Happy 1 Year COVID! Simply Naval: Happiness podcast! 0:31“How bad of a time is it to start a fitness business? 5:37“How do you relieve DOMS? 8:51“I gained a lot of weight recently and I’ve lost motivation. How do I get back on track?”  12:40“How to cut belly fat while keeping leg and booty mass?”  17:39“Will I need to follow the same rules to get from 11% body fat to 8% that I did to get to 11% body fat initially?”  19:06“Deloading: What is it? Why?”  20:43“Does pilates affect muscle gain?”  22:35“What are your thoughts on BFR bands?”  23:10“What format do you use to record your client’s stuff? Apps?”  25:29Support the Show.

Welcome in everybody to another episode of the dynamic dialogue podcast. As always, I am your host Danny Matranga. Today is March 16. It's a Tuesday, you'll probably hear this episode on Wednesday or Thursday morning. I hope you're having a wonderful week, man, what a strange, strange day. We'll do a little housekeeping before we dive into some of your guys's fitness and health questions but march 16th is exactly one year to the date from when we were put into a shelter in place as they called it at the time notice here in california maybe a day or two early but the 16th was a big day because it actually represented one year ago today that I hung things up at the gym that I was renting space at and moved everything into my garage. And I think that's going to be my new move now. Um, for multiple reasons, it keeps my overhead lower, keeps my clients safer. They have a place where they can come and train where they know it's clean. It's just them. I don't do as many one-on-one

sessions as I used to. Back when I first got started in the industry, I do anywhere from 140 to 200 sessions a month, which came out to between like 35 sessions all the way up to like sometimes 50 sessions a week. And a lot of that was while I was in school. So I was definitely burning the candle at both ends. I still train clients now in person. Of course, I really enjoy it. But given that, you know, my time is more limited with what I'm doing on the podcast, with the projects that I have going, like the mentorship, the affiliations, and the partnerships that I have. And of course the clients that I work virtually and running a quote unquote personal brand in the digital space. I can't train 50 sessions a week anymore. So the number falls somewhere closer to 30, 35. But yeah, totally strange serendipitous, if you will, that we're coming up on one year of this.

And we also had the one year anniversary of the podcast very recently here. If it hasn't happened yet again, I don't remember the day, but I just remember that it was all launched in March and then shit kind of hit the fan. So a very, very interesting year, stressful year, hard year for a lot of people, for all of you who have listened through this, for all the trainers who have come to me for advice, or just come to share your story, whether it's on the podcast or in my DMs or via email. I think we're getting closer. You know, things out here with vaccinations are going a little bit more slowly than I'd like, but I plan on getting my vaccine end of April, early May. That's kind of how things look to be shaping up. I'm very much looking forward to getting that done

so I can have a little bit more peace of mind and get on with my life. And I haven't really been on a vacation in quite some time for a variety of different reasons, one of which, of course, is COVID. And I'm so, so looking forward to hopefully getting a vacation in here soon. I'm thinking Hawaii. That is a space very special and near and dear to my heart. My father and I used to go there every single year growing up, and I would love nothing more than to go back. Okay, a podcast recommendation for you guys. It is not my podcast. If you followed me on Instagram or Twitter, you know that I like to share quotes from Naval, one of my favorite philosophers, Naval Ravikant. You can find his Joe Rogan podcast. I strongly recommend starting there, N-A-V-A-L. But Naval has a podcast titled simply Naval, N-A-V-A-L,

and his most recent podcast is titled Happiness. It was launched last Friday. I strongly recommend checking that out. Again, Happiness from Naval. That is an absolutely wonderful podcast to listen to after you finish this one. Back to the COVID stuff. It looks like we are leaving here where I'm at in California, the purple tier, which is the stay the fuck in your house tier. And gyms should be reopening tomorrow and restaurants on Friday. So very, very excited about that. Excited we're getting closer to the NFL draft. Nothing on earth makes me happier. I am a little bummed

we're not getting our traditional combine stuff. I really like watching the combine. As a trainer, I really look at the athletic performance of some of these guys and sometimes just marvel. It's really, really enjoyable. But we're getting closer to the draft. Free agency was nuts. Bill Belichick

fucking backed up the Brinks truck. And the Patriots went and signed two tight ends. And I'll remind people, if you go back to 2012, Josh McDaniels was the OC there in New England. And they had a like 35 points per game offense with no wide receivers. Maybe their best wide receiver was like Brandon Lloyd. Obviously, they had Gronk and the now deceased Aaron Hernandez but what a tandem they had there and to go out and get John O'Smith and Hunter Henry seems to me like they might be trying to uh replicate that dual tight end system really be a run heavy team maybe I'm a little high on Damian Harris going into the season if they don't draft another running back kind of feels just gross to say, cause I just genuinely despise all Patriots running backs. And Cam Newton is like the ultimate, you know, Oh, we're inside the five. I'm just

going to fucking power it in myself. So for fantasy, it's going to be a pain in the ass, but the Patriots are spending money, which for anybody who's not a Patriots fan, which is probably most of you is just like, Oh God, they're coming back. Anyway, let's get into your questions. That'll do it for the housekeeping. Lots of fitness questions we are going to get through. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten questions. Can we do ten questions today? We shall see. All right.

First one comes from AtGoodLifeDiver. And her question is, how bad a time is it to start a new fitness business? So that's kind of why I started off talking about COVID, right? Because if you have been living under a rock, perhaps you didn't notice that the world has been fucking thrown into a complete upheaval, especially at the gym. And it's somewhat problematic if you're trying to start a fitness business. I shouldn't say at the gym, but I should say in the gym slash fitness space. You might be thinking, is now really a good time to do this? I actually think it might be. And the reason that I think it might be is because I think

a lot of people are going to be really, really excited to get back out there, get active, work on their body, improve their health again in a way that maybe they couldn't. Maybe they're looking for the community that they've had to kind of sacrifice over the last couple months and years, depending on where you live, with restrictions around the virus. A book I read, which I recommend, called Apollo's Arrow from Nicholas Christakis, was all about COVID. And one of the things this guy really highlighted was that he thought we might have a post-COVID boom type event where people are very excited, very ready to get out, almost like a roaring 20s post Great Depression. I don't know how that's going to look economically, but I don't think it's a bad time per se. I think it might be a volatile time. I think it might be a scary time,

especially with everything that's going along around financially. But I think it'd be really, really foolish to go, oh, it's just a bad time. I can't do it. No hope, no chance. I think that a lot of times when most people are afraid to take action or they're intimidated to take action because of what's going on, you have a better opportunity of having, if you do take action, a greater impact, greater reach, you know, being the person who says, hey, you know what? Yeah, it could be a bad time because everybody's freaked out about COVID or, you know, there's a chance it could be a great time and I'm willing to roll the dice. I'm willing to take the risk. So, you know, I don't know if I would be opening like a huge commercial big box gym right now. I

don't know how that industry is going to shape up over the next like eight to 10 years. But if I was a fitness coach and I wanted to do like a small group studio or outdoor workouts, or maybe explore the zoom slash online space, uh, I think all of that is free game open season. And I think a lot of people are going to be looking for ways that they can improve their health. They're going to be looking for opportunities to enhance their wellbeing and, you know and connect with people in a way that personal training or fitness coaching really kind of fits in there, right? It's a kind of relationship business. You're working with people. You're creating relationships. People are craving

that stuff right now. So I would say that I am in the camp of it's a good time. And again, take what I'm saying with a grain of salt. I'm obviously biased, but I think that we might be heading into a, perhaps I'm a little bit bullish on it, but I think we're going to be heading into a very, very fitness and health focused next couple years with what we learned about the virus, how important our health is. Everybody had to really take that into consideration the last couple of years. So I think it might be a really, really good time. Actually, if I'm being honest. All right. And the next question comes from at underscore Anna active, and she says,

how do you relieve DOM? So let's break down first the acronym DOMS, D-O-M-S, which stands for delayed onset muscle soreness. And the most important letters in DOMS are D and O, delayed and onset. So having soreness that kind of permeates the tissue and aches and, oh, I notice it. And, oh, I definitely hit legs. And, oh, it was worse two days later. We've all been there. That's what we would classify as DOMS. And DOMS can be multifactorial in nature. It can be caused by the muscle damage from training. It can be exacerbated by excessive waste product like hydrogen and lactate sitting around in tissue too far after training is finished. It can be exacerbated by poor nutrition and bad sleep, inadequate protein, right? So we look at, okay, what is most likely to cause DOMS? Really heavy training, a lot of mechanical tension,

a lot of muscle damage. So really focusing on the eccentric. So if I was doing like a lying hamstring curl, let's use this as an example. And I do three sets of 10. And, you know, client one does three sets of 10 with a very consistent tempo of like two seconds down on the eccentric, two second pause at the bottom, two seconds up, two second pause at the top. But the second client does a four second eccentric. So that lengthening portion where that hamstring is getting long and lowering the weight back, right, that is twice as long. And we know that at least for most people, eccentric activity is more closely associated with soreness and muscle pain. So if you are somebody who's like, my nutrition's

on point, my sleep is on point, but I still get hella sore, you might be doing a little bit too much eccentric work. You might want to dial that back a little bit. And you can do that with exercise selection. You can do that with tempo. You can maybe train a little bit less in the lengthened position or try to balance it out between the shortened and the lengthened position. But really what I found for most people is that DOMS is normal. It's okay to have it. It tends to be more closely associated, like I said, with either increased eccentrics, focused on the eccentric training a lot in the lengthened position, introducing novel training stimuli like new movements or new tempos or new schemes, all that different stuff. And the best way we can go about combating it is making sure that

our peri-workout nutrition is good, getting the right foods pre and post-workout, making sure our sleep is good, making sure our hydration is good. I don't know if it's something you can ever get away from entirely unless you train like a total baby, but I really think the best thing we can talk about here with regards to managing any type of soreness or just enhancing recovery is always going to boil down to lifestyle stuff. How am I doing with my nutrition? How am I doing with my sleep? Am I managing my stress? Those things can all really, really help manage muscle soreness of any type, but particularly DOMS. The other thing too is it seems to be in some ways, quote unquote, geographical in nature in that some tissues

are more susceptible to DOMS than others. The reason I use the hamstring curl as an exercise example is because hamstrings tend to be a muscle that if you really punish them can be sore for multiple, multiple days. Not entirely true why that is. I have heard people reference that it has to do with vascularization or vascularity in the tissue, not having a ton of blood supply. So things stick around longer. You can't get metabolites out as quickly. You can't get nutrition in as quickly. I don't know if there's actually any data to support that. It's been a long time since I looked at the vascular network of the average human being, if I'm being honest. But straight up, some shit just gets more sore than others. So optimize for nutrition and lifestyle

practices that are aligned with your best recovery. Okay, so the next question comes from at Serafina Ross, and she says, I've gained a lot of weight recently and I've lost motivation. How can I get back on track? So getting back on track implies that previously to your weight gain and your loss of motivation, you had a routine in place that was working. You were on track. What I would do is I would sit down with a pen and paper and I would write down, I would draw a line right down the middle of that paper, right? And for anybody listening in the car or anybody listening at home, you can do this for pretty much anything. This is a pretty easy exercise. But on that list, on one side, write the previous habits that you had in place that

were helping you stay on track or that were your habits that had you quote unquote on track, write down what was working well and what you were doing on the other side of the paper, write down the habits that you have implemented since then that are either getting in the way of you getting back on track that are directly opposed to your overall goal, right? So like if you were tracking calories when you were on track and now you're going to the hometown buffet every dinner and fucking, you know, bringing home three plates, we can go, okay, so those are two kind of contradictory habits, and we've made some changes, right? So that's important to look at. Once you've made your lists, go ahead and pick one thing on the list of stuff that was working well that you'd

like to get back to, and one thing on the list of stuff that you're doing currently that you'd like to get back to. And one thing on the list of stuff that you're doing currently that you'd like to change and address one of those things from each side. So two things total for, you know, four to seven days, half a week to a week, work on it actively. Okay. Make a point to go. All right. I can't, the last thing that you want to do is try to eliminate all of the new habits, right? Get rid of all of the new habits, bad or not, and bring back all of the old habits, good or not. That's really fucking hard, right? People are creatures of habit. Things happen slowly. Behavior change happens slowly. I think a like almost periodized programmed approach would be really smart. So once you've made your list, order them in order of importance and kind of pick big rocks one at a time. So, okay, I have been having a hard time with overeating highly processed foods.

That is one of the things I'm going to work on this week. And I have not been going to the gym as much as I used to. So this week, my goals are when I go grocery shopping, I'm going to buy 75% less highly processed food. And I'm going to then buy, I'm going to go to the gym three times this week. That's my goal. And do that for a while. Once you create a routine, go down the list. And before you know it, you'll probably be back to your old habits. You'll also be building quite a bit of momentum. And so this is a really good practice for saying, okay, I'm not going to bite off more than I can chew. I know exactly where I want to get back to. I know what those habits were, and I'm going to slowly reintroduce them so I can build some momentum, see some success and kind of build up my confidence because it is really hard to get back on track,

especially after everything we've been through. I can understand that I can empathize with that. I've seen this with my clients, whether it's the clients that I work with in person or online. When your routine is disrupted, a lot of times we look back and go, how the hell was I able to do all that? Right? And so trying to take it all back at once can be really challenging. So I would encourage you to do that. Go slow. And then the reminder that I give everybody when it comes to motivation, and again, going through this slowly and working one habit in and eliminating one bad habit at a time will build your motivation. Cause you'll be like, oh my gosh, I am seeing myself make progress and be successful. And that feels fucking amazing. But here's the thing. You

don't need motivation. You really don't. It's nice when it comes by, right? I like to think of motivation as like, she's like, motivation's like a hot chick in that, you know, or okay, this sounds fucked up. Motivation is like an attractive human being. Okay. You're like, oh my God, I love when that person walks by. They're so cool to look at. They're just beautiful. They're like a gorgeous person. But deep down, you know, they're kind of that person walks by. They're so cool to look at. They're just beautiful. They're like a gorgeous person, but deep down, you know, they're kind of a piece of crap. They're kind of scummy. And so when they come by, you go like, man, they're fun to look at, but I'm not going to obsess over it. And I'm certainly not going to put all my eggs in the motivation basket. Cause if you do, it'll burn you every time people who accomplish great

shit. And I'm not saying I've accomplished much, but people who accomplish things do it because they know how to keep going when they are not motivated. So when you are motivated and when that attractive person walks by, fuck yeah, that's amazing. Appreciate it. Enjoy it. Take advantage of it. But they don't come around very often. And if you rely on them too much because this attractive person is a scumbag, they're going to burn you. So just do yourself a favor. Don't rely on motivation. Instead, when it is present, use it to your advantage. But don't think that you need to be permanently motivated to get shit done. 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. Next question is from at Amanda Jane. She says, how to cut belly fat while keeping legs and booty mass. Maybe that should be the name of my next program, booty mass. And I'll just have like a, like a, like a atomic bomb, uh, inside a pair of like short shorts, just booty mass.

I don't know. It's a terrible idea. Okay. So very simple protocol here. If we want to reduce body fat in any area, a calorie deficit is probably the way to go. Unfortunately, we can't select as to where that body fat is going to come off. So you might lose a little bit of tissue from your legs and butt, but you probably will lose a little bit of body fat from your midsection as well, which is awesome. awesome. So what can we do to maintain as much quote unquote mass size, muscularity in the lower body, in the thighs and in the glutes, we can probably increase our training volume. If you're somebody who's training glutes two times a week or glutes and legs two times a week, perhaps add a third day as you work in a calorie deficit, a little extra training volume might encourage some hypertrophy, even in a caloric deficit or at maintenance. At the very least, it will help you maintain those tissues, give them a signal that, hey, I want to keep you around. I want to keep you muscular while we go through this dieting process. Always a good idea, right? And again, I'm not making any guarantees. You can't spot target body fat, but if you up your training volume, you can definitely

do yourself a service as to maintaining muscularity through a deficit. All right. So next question comes from Ian Kormas and Ian Kormas. And he says, well, I need to follow the same rules to get from 11% body fat to eight that I did to get to 11% body fat initially. Will it be harder? Yeah. I mean, we'll keep it short. We'll keep it sweet. It's probably going to be harder. There are metabolic adaptations that occur as you lose body fat, as you lose muscle mass, as you stay in a caloric deficit longer, and those metabolic adaptations tend to be down regulation of general metabolic output. So to get leaner than you are right now, if you are stuck, you probably will have to eat a little bit less or move a little bit

more. You'll have to make some changes. You might want to try a diet break in between. You might want to try a refeed in between. But realistically, it would be foolish to assume that eating the same amount of calories that got you from wherever you were at initially to 11% will get you to 8% as well. Now, here's the thing. If you're losing weight very rapidly, if you have not plateaued, if you have not seen any decrease in your rate of weight loss, there's no reason to eat less. It is very possible that your initial deficit was strong enough, or I shouldn't say strong enough. What's the right verbiage here? That your initial deficit was substantial enough to get you from 8% and maybe you're just impatient. But what I have found is it's quite difficult to

get sub 10 for most people, especially if you don't make a lot of caloric adjustments. So I would imagine that to get to 11 required one particular way of eating and to get to eight will require some additional sacrifice. I don't think that's saying too much. Okay. At M free asks, deloading. What is it? Why? Again, we'll try to keep this short and sweet because I think people fall down the deloading rabbit hole a lot. Deloading is a strategically implemented period in which your training volume and training intensity are usually reduced with an effort to one, enhance recovery, two, promote muscle growth through super compensation, central nervous system fatigue mitigation. We don't really know how much of that we're really doing, but basically we're giving our

body a little bit of a fucking break. So we might be able to attenuate some gains through super compensation and we can set ourselves up to train that much harder in our next training block. Typically a deload will happen in between training blocks. Most people will do them every four, six, 12 weeks, depending on how hard they train. If you were doing like something like Olympic lifting, where you were training very similarly all year round with a lot of movements that are highly similar, you might take more deloads. If you're doing something like bodybuilding, where you're constantly changing and rotating exercises, you might deload every 12 weeks. How often you deload is really individualized. What your deloads look like is really individualized,

but usually what we're doing is we're working on some stuff that we want to maintain our skill at. So if we're an Olympic lifter deloading, we're still going to do the Olympic lifts. We just won't do them as heavy, probably won't do as much volume. If we're a bodybuilder and we're looking to deload and maybe achieve some resensitization to a hypertrophy stimulus so that our body is very much you know in alignment with our goals and and like i said resensitized we're not just hammering the same stimulus you might just do a couple of light upper lower workouts with really low volume to maintain your tissue but give your joints a break so that you can again hit it harder in the future and the whole point here is to what i would describe prolong the training career minimize injury make training better um almost like a planned little break that will make things that much sweeter when you finally

get back to them okay at ya girl ya girl spreeve spreeve sprive she says does pilates affect muscle gain i'm to say probably not positively or negatively much at all. If anything, it will enhance the strength and stability of your core, pelvic girdle, mid low back glutes, which will probably help indirectly with your weight lifting. But I don't know how much that will help or hurt your muscle gain. I don't think it's going to be too much. If you're trying to build and you're trying to like bulk up and really gain some tissue, the caloric expenditure of Pilates should be replaced with more food. Um, but I don't think it's going to kill you to do a little bit of Pilates here and there at EMC 69 underscore

nay. Anytime I see 69 and a username, I laugh a little bit inside. What are your thoughts on BFR bands? So this BFR craze is going nuts and it's pissing me off for two big reasons. One, BFR has fucking been around forever, a really, really long time, quite frankly. And it's been predominantly used for upper extremity training for bodybuilders to get a sick arm pump. Fitness marketers have now said, aha, we can leverage BFR research. We can leverage BFR popularity and the literature and just slap some bands around your glutes, some cuffs around your glutes or your upper leg and say that, oh my God, you're going to get massive amounts of gain from doing BFR work for your glutes. I have not seen

any of the literature specific to glute hypertrophy. I do think that BFR training is really, really effective for some populations. I don't think it's better than traditional resistance training. I think it's a nice supplement, a nice accessory to traditional resistance training. It's probably very good for outpatient orthopedic populations who are post surgery, but it's not for fucking everybody. And it's certainly not a replacement for general progressive overload. Even if you don't have a ton of equipment access, you can still get a lot with body weight training, not using something like BFR. The pathways by which BFR works are pretty fascinating, right? We have metabolic fatigue, the accumulation of metabolites and oxygen deprivation, which might be hypertrophic independently, right? We're also probably going to train very close to muscular

failure or with a high degree of intensity with little to no weight, which is great. We want to train close to failure and BFR can allow us to do this. Um, but the fitness marketing is kind of bastardization of it and trying to turn everything that's ever worked ever into a way for girls who don't want to work out very hard to build their ass. Pisses me the fuck off. If you want to build great glutes. And I know this question is all about the recent BFR for your glute stuff, because nobody asked me shit about BFR for like a year. And then the minute I saw all of this glute stuff for BFR, I started getting flooding with questions. If you want to build your glutes, you should lunge heavy, split squat, heavy, squat,

heavy, bridge, heavy, hip thrust, heavy, deadlift, heavy, close to failure with progression in a variety of different rep ranges. The BFR shit should be the cherry on top. And I'll leave it at that. All right. Next question is from app mud 814. What format do you use for recording your client stuff? Question mark app question mark. No, I don't use apps. I think apps are very distracting. I don't want my clients data on somebody else's app. If that app crashes or that app doesn't work or that app goes away, then all of my shit's gone. So everything is done in-house.

I have some really nice PDFs that I can adjust for nutrition, for programming, for check-ins so that they're highly tailored to the individual. And that way, when I'm working with a client, they actually have something to keep when they're done. They have all these PDFs. They have all their workouts. They have all the workout logs they've ever done. They have a great way to look back and take a to keep when they're done. They have all these PDFs, they have all their workouts, they have all the workout logs they've ever done. They have a great way to look back and take a peek at what they've done. I did use apps.

Originally, I used an app called MyPTHub, which I did not love. And I have since transitioned to PDFs and I'm exponentially happier with my business. And I'm really glad that I made that decision. All right, guys, that was pretty quick. Happy we got through all those questions. Really, really excited to be back recording we got through all those questions. Really, really excited to be back recording, going through a little bit in my personal life, if I am being entirely honest, which has kind of forced me to take a pause, realign myself with what matters to me, try to find peace of mind, a little bit of happiness to navigate these tough times. The podcast is something that I really love, and I know you guys appreciate it. I'm so appreciative of anyone who listens, but please do bear with me. Please be patient. I'm doing my best to bring this to you. If I'm being 100% honest, there are days

that I don't want to bring it to you. Today was not a day that I had the energy or emotional wherewithal to sit down and record. I was not motivated, but I am, um, I'm very much invested in giving young guys at least one episode a week. I want to do more. I really, really do. And trust me, I promise I'm working on it. I will be better with this. Um, but I am going through some things right now that command a little bit more of my attention. I want to be present for those things. Um, and I'll share those with you probably in the future. Nothing too concerning, probably stuff that we all deal with. But again, if you've wondered

why the podcast frequency has been low, I wanted to be transparent about that and share that with you guys here because you're a community that I very much appreciate. Every subscriber, every listener, anybody who's been kind enough to share, leave a review. I love all of you. I appreciate you,

and I can't wait to bring you more in the future. So stay tuned for that. Until then, have a fabulous rest of your week week and we'll check in with each other soon.