Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 11 - Q+A, Total Body Every Day, Home Workouts, Garage Gyms, Cutting During Covid-19 + MORE

Episode Date: March 31, 2020

In this episode Danny talks all things garage gym as well as touching on:The benefits of high frequency, whole-body training.How to create home equipment for cheap.How to get back on the wagon.Does Joe Exotic (Tiger King) deserve a retrial?Want your question to be featured on the dynamic dialogues podcast? Send an email to [e-mail] with the subject "podcast question".Support the Show.

Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogues podcast. Today's episode is all Q&A just for you, answering questions from Instagram, a few I've gotten in email, and a few I've gotten from Facebook. Now before I get into it, just a heads up, I'm recording this in the new garage gym I just installed. I'll actually go pretty deep into detail as to how I made that all come together, because I think there might be something of value in here for you guys, particularly as to how I built it out.

But with regards to the audio, please bear with me, because I haven't recorded in here before, and I'm not sure what to expect from the acoustics. All right, so let's get into it again. Acoustics aside, I hope everything comes together nicely on the back end, but if it doesn't, I'll just move back to the recording space I was in originally. But as far as the garage gym goes, let's talk about how I built this thing out and more importantly, how you can kind of emulate it and build something similar in your own space, whether it's in your apartment,

your garage, whatever you have access to. So first and foremost, I built this thing out very simply with some horse stall mat from Tractor Supply. They were three by four, four by six. So they weren't particularly huge, but they were big enough to cover large portions of my garage. So I didn't spend a ton of money on the flooring. I just used horse stall mat from Tractor Supply. And then I built it out with the weights I kind of already had. But I would say if you have a garage gym space and you haven't floored it yet, putting on the flooring is going to contribute. I'm looking back at it as I speak, but putting the flooring in is probably going to contribute to giving it the greatest overall aesthetic of matching a gym. But from an equipment standpoint, whatever you build into it, you've probably got to select things that you're going to be able to load with plates,

particularly because machinery is going to take up too much space. So you'll want lots of free weight implements like barbells, dumbbells, kettlebells, anything you can load with a plate, like a hex bar might be nice, easy bar might be nice, but you can get most of it done with just iron. But if you want even more cost efficient stuff, you can look into things like TRX and bands, which actually leads me into the first thing I wanted to touch on today, which was a kind of bevy of questions I've gotten about what should I invest in or spend my money on right now if buying a ton of gym equipment or building out my garage gym isn't really applicable for me in my financial situation or my fitness situation. And I can relate to this because one, I do have empathy

for people and what they're going through. And I understand this is a completely insane, crazy time for a lot of us. And many of the people who I know, who even many of the people who I work with are out of a job and looking and almost scrambling to try to piece together some type of semblance and resemblance to fitness or what their routine was before this. And it's really, really hard. It's hard to do because again, finances are different spaces, different equipment, accessibility is different, but people still have the same goal. So from a bare bones, fundamental piece of equipment standpoint, I think the number one piece of home equipment you can get your hands on right now that's available is actually bands.

And I know that bands kind of get shit on a lot by fit pros because, you know, there was kind of an over-reliance on bands for too long, particularly like glute bands. And it became a meme. Girls using bands became a meme. But a lot of these bands come in various widths. They come in various lengths. So they come in various densities. And I'm looking at my wall in the garage gym right now, and I have a quarter-inch band, inch band, a half an inch band, and a full inch band. The half, the quarter inch band I can use for lateral raises, band pull aparts to hit my, primarily my shoulders. The half inch band works wonderfully for hitting things like biceps or seated overhead press where I actually get under it or banded pushups. And the full inch band works tremendously for even doing things like all my banded row,

banded straight arm pull downs, triceps, biceps curl. In the inch and a half band, the biggest band is wonderful for doing things like banded deadlifts or even banded squats. So they give you the ability to put a lot of unique kind of tension into the system along the various lines of musculature and force that you're going to use in your typical movements. And they're kind of intuitive to use. Like you don't have to be super creative. If you wrap a band around something, you start pulling on it, you're going to work your lats and you have your upper back or something that you pull with. So eventually you're going to kind of orient into the positions that you've naturally trained in. And I found in

some ways they're borderline idiot proof because once you play with them a little bit, they tend to load things best in the shortened position for whatever reason. You really just get this great sensation of, oh yeah, as I'm contracting and I'm pulling that band in, I'm really feeling it. So the piece of equipment number one is going to definitely be bands. Now beyond that, I just want to give body weight a little bit of credit. Um, while you can't crush it with body weight, one thing you'll find works incredibly well are just simple pull-ups, pushups, split squats, and Nordic hamstring curls, right? So a posterior chain movement for the upper body and push up or an anterior chain movement for the upper body and pushups, a posterior chain movement for the upper body with pull-ups, an anterior chain slash hybrid dominant movement with the split squat or the rear foot elevated squat, and then

a posterior chain one with the Nordic ham curl. So you get both sides of the body, both kind of hemispheres of the body. But what I like about the push-up is it tends to be a little bit easier on the shoulder than conventional pressing modalities. And it's probably the easiest exercise ever to progressively overload from an at-home standpoint because you can consistently just work on saying oh what's the most push-ups I can do in a minute or you know what are the most unbroken strict push-ups I can do across five sets whatever you want to do it's very easy you just work on getting more same thing with pull-ups which I quite like and I think that most trainees male female nov female, novice, advanced, could still benefit from doing those movements relatively close to failure with good technique and good form,

and they still work a ton of musculature. Now, if you can't do pull-ups, you got your bands. I have more options and hype, like kind of little MacGyver things I'll get to in a minute. As for the lower body, the Nordic ham curl works great, particularly if you have a partner. And split squats are hard as hell no matter what, even body weight, they tend to be difficult, especially if you slow things down, use quarter reps, pause reps, or tempo to your benefit.

Now, in terms of, like I said, I'll get to not being able to do pull-ups. One of the best things I've actually seen is a TRX comprised entirely of bedsheets. I'm going to do something on my Instagram about this tomorrow because I thought it was really interesting. I don't remember who I saw it from first. I've seen it a few times. And it's people who, for what I can see, kind of understand how suspension trainers work, but they don't know which moves are actually good. So I'll go into like some good bed sheet suspension trainer exercises that you can do, but it essentially emulates the TRX to a certain degree. It's not perfect, but it simulates a TRX, puts you in a situation where you can, again, put some load into the system in a unique way.

And suspension training isn't like ideal, but if you pair it with bands and body weight stuff, you know, we're talking like sub $100, $200. We can train our whole body, not perfectly, but our whole body. And then we can go from there because for when you start getting into things like dumbbells and barbells, you're looking at at least like a buck oh nine pound, depending on whatever the price of iron is and whatever these places are selling it for. You're looking at some pretty expensive equipment, which granted it is fantastic equipment, but not everybody's in a space where they can focus on that. Another question I got that I wanted to address was what am I doing to combat snacking? So anybody who listens to the podcast is probably no stranger to the fact that I do in fact consume cannabis, which sometimes makes me snack a little bit more than I might like.

So I have to be very careful as to what I keep in the house. But lately, I've been finding that I've kind of been gravitating to berries, pistachios particularly, and Marcona almonds, some lower sugar jerky, and Cuties. When I went to Costco, those were the things I stocked up on because I want to grab snacks that at least have some nutrient density, some fiber, some food volume, some nutrient, I already said nutrients, and some protein. Those things are really important. Nutrient density, protein, fiber, food volume. And again, if there's a little bit of water in the fruit, even better. So those are the things I typically buy for snack foods. And what you'll notice is they're all relatively minimally processed.

They have some nutrition attached to them. And when you eat them, you don't feel nearly as bad as if you're just snacking on hyper palatable, high calorie, relatively low nutrient density foods. That's where you kind of get into a problem with snacking. But one of the things I've been doing is focusing on getting those things in. So when I do feel the urge to snack, especially during the stressful time, I don't have to go like down the diet rabbit hole of like, oh no, don't have that. That's bad. That's good. Don't snack this and that. No, I just go, you know, you're going to make it work. And at least there's some nutrition, some proteins and fiber in here.

And I'm not tracking my macros rigidly. So it ends up working out quite well with what I'm doing. So let's dive into the Q and a first question is from at Coach Carruthers, and he asks, full body at home with some equipment benefits to five, six days low intensity. So what he wants to know is, can I train five to six days a week my whole body if I'm training at home with low intensity? My initial response is absolutely. I think that high frequency training is really popular now anyway, even using implements like traditional barbell and dumbbell training. And if you look at the way Olympic lifters and CrossFitters lift, they essentially lift whole body five to six days a week.

And granted, you're not going to be recovering like those athletes, especially right now, because you're probably not doing the things that they're doing, but you're also not training that hard. So I do think that five to six days low intensity work with body weight would be fine. And there's a few actual reasons that I like this from a just pure programming standpoint as a coach. And I've got a lot of my clients doing this. It is low intensity.

But one, we get to increase that mTOR pathway. We get to kind of jump that protein synthesis in each of those muscle groups every single day. That's never a bad thing, particularly for general population. The second thing that I really like is obviously we're going to increase caloric expenditure because if we're having, let's just say we do a typical push-pull leg day, we can assume that push, because it uses the chest, triceps, and shoulders, the smallest parent grouping of muscles, is likely to burn less calories than the pull day, which uses more musculature from a surface area standpoint, and certainly than the leg day, which we choose the most. But doing five

to six days of low intensity whole body training allows us to use our largest muscle groups, often in conjunction with one another, which is going to increase our caloric expenditure, which is never a bad thing. One of the things I actually taught my trainers a lot when I was coaching and hiring trainers was if you have a client who has a weight loss goal, you know, bicep curls and tricep extensions, while they might want to tone their arms, this is of course what the client would say. I want to tone my arms coach. Okay. Well, we're going to have you do like a thousand bicep curls and tricep extensions. Well, that might be intuitive, right? We actually always are going to get more, particularly for gen pop fat loss, out of selecting compound movements that work well for that person's body. Because that's going to allow us to, again,

progressively overload more quickly, apply more weight to the bar, apply more stress to the tissue, apply more energy out of the body to move greater weights, which is going to increase the caloric expenditure. It's going to increase insulin sensitivity through that mTOR pathway, or I'm sorry, through that GLUT4 pathway that opens up when we train musculature because we're training more at once. So there's really a big, big benefit, even for general population at home right now, to training those big muscle groups more frequently, particularly if they can recover. So I'm all over it. It's something I've done for years with clients, particularly if the goal is to say, let's just say it's like, okay, I'm not so worried about absolutely crushing and annihilating each muscle group. I'm cool with

training while shy of failure. I just want to focus on, you know, getting a good training stimulus, getting a good training response in hitting multiple muscle groups. Maybe I want to work on my mobility, my core, some coordination work where I tie things together. This could be awesome, particularly for right now. So I'm all over it. Coach Carruthers, I think it's a good approach right now. It depends on your fitness level and your goals, but I think it's going to be fine. Second question is at Odley asks, she says, I'm really struggling to get back on the wagon. What do you suggest I do? So first, a lot of people are off the wagon right now. And we can primarily just focus on taking a

breath, looking down, seeing where your feet are in this moment in time, and just accepting the place that you stand right now. Accepting where you are at is a really big part of moving forward. And this is something I have to talk to my clients a lot about. And it helps us frame things properly, right? So if I get a client that comes to me and they have unrealistic goals, if I try to hype them up and just drive that unrealistic goal into reality and just give it legs, we're both going to pay for that. I'm not going to look good as a coach when you don't reach it.

And you're not going to feel good as a coach when you don't reach it. And you're not going to feel good as a client when you don't reach it. So one of the things I tell all my clients to do whenever they're in a unique situation, they've got a goal in mind, they think they might know what they want to do. I just say, hey, stop, look where you're at. Look at what's going on around you. Are you really going to be able to commit what you need to commit to do this? Yes or no? There is no wrong answer. If the answer is yes, let's get it. If the answer is no, let's get as close as we can, right? And so just take a breath. Say, hey, if I did fall off the wagon, is it realistic that I'm going to pick up right where I left off? Okay, especially if when I fell off the wagon, I had full gym access and, you know, I was in my routine and

now I'm getting up after my fall. I'm looking for the wagon. It's nowhere to be found. And all I have are two booty bands and a protein bar in the pantry and no job. You know, crazy shit's going on for a lot of people. So just take a breath and say, OK, I need to do something. I know where I want to be. Maybe you want to get back to where you were when you fell off the wagon. Look where you're at now and realistically ask yourself, OK, how long is it going to

take me to get into a routine to get back there so you can pick it up right away badass for a lot of people that's going to be the case if not just start small okay think about what's manageable think about what you can tackle today tomorrow this week think about the things you can do to get back to that space you want to be in that's going to be a totally fine thing especially right now because a lot of us have the time to get there and the energy to get there. And then think about what you can kind of do to turn this goal into a plan and create some habits around that plan, follow the habits, and you should get there. Remember, it's not really goals that get us places, it's habits and systems. So say, I know what I want. I want to get back on the wagon and that looks like X, Y, Z. And to look like X, Y, Z, I need to do A, B, C.

Okay, let's turn A, B, C into some daily habits and practices. You're going to get back there a lot faster probably than you thought. And you're not alone in this. A lot of people, including myself, are struggling with finding the best way to make this work. 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. Okay, so this question is from at KS. Okay, at QSTI, at QSTICA, he says weighted dip alternative at home. So weighted dips are tough. Particularly what I found when people do the weighted dip, they tend to do the chest dominant version of the dip over that tricep dominant version of the dip. There's two primary variations mechanically that people do bar dips. Now, my first instinct is to say, okay, you can actually construct a dip bar out of some relatively cheap PVC if you do it right.

It can be done. But you, of course, have the bench dip variation where the shoulders, again, they still go into extension behind the body. This is the one that people typically do on like a chair or a bench at the gym. That's still an option. And then you also have push-ups, right? But one of the things you can do to make that push-up a little bit more similar to a dip is put your feet up on a bench behind you and pull your hands a little bit more underneath you.

If your hands were to go further in front of you, it'd be more like a handstand push-up, which would be a little bit more similar to a shoulder press. If your push-ups were in a more traditional stance, it would be a little bit more like a bench press. But as those hands and arms come a little bit more into extension and the body translates a little bit more over them, you're going to probably find that's a lot more similar to a dip or at least the feeling you get. So think about that. Play with your push-up a little bit. Perhaps construct a dip bar if you're really zealous and there's not a lot of people going to your hardware store and you can make that trip for other essentials. And then if not, you always have bench dips. But weighted dips are particularly tough because you need something

sturdy and stable. So I might go for building my own dip bar. All right, this question is from at Bayer. I am experiencing crepitus. How do I fix this? So I'm not going to tell you how to fix crepitus. What I am going to tell you is what it really is, where it shows up and what the kind of common consensus around it is. So crepitus is generally painless popping that occurs at joints as a function of movement. When you're clicking and clacking and there's no pain, a lot of times we call that crepitus. And as far as I'm concerned, as long as you've got some clicking and clacking but there's no associative pain or movement dysfunction, you're probably okay to keep going because your body's going to make noise. It's going to click and clack.

And if you've got little aches and pains associated with it, you definitely want to get that looked at and checked out. If it's contributing to movement dysfunction, get that checked out. But if it's just your occasional click or clack, or you've got what I call rice krispies, where it's just like clack, clack, clack, like my ankles are rice krispies. You hear that? That's my ankle. Literally my ankle underneath the table I podcast at. Anytime I go into inversion, eversion, or rotate that thing around, Rice Krispies like crazy. Doesn't hurt. Squat feels great. Again, that's just my two cents on it, but you can always check with a therapist. Great question though, because it comes up a lot. It's something a lot of people are going through, and it's always interesting when somebody actually knows what it's called,

lot. It's something a lot of people are going through and it's always interesting when somebody actually knows what it's called because most people have never heard of Crepitus. At Trevor Ottman asks, does Exotic Joe, and he means Joe Exotic, aka Joe Schreibvogel, the Tiger Mogul, the Tiger King, the greatest tiger owner in the history of tigers, who by the way was totally on to Carole Bin, who did kill his husband. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you need to watch Tiger King on Netflix right now. Does Joe Exotic deserve a retrial? No, I do think Joe Exotic is a crazy motherfucker. All right. Joe Exotic is completely insane. He's definitely off his rocker and he's done way too much meth. However, as far as Tiger King goes,

is that cast of characters, they were all pretty shitty people. And so all Joe Exotic was really doing was trying to go, you know, he wasn't trying to be the first one to go down. He was trying to bring those other people with him. So I think they should all be in jail with Joe Exotic right next to each other. That's how I feel about it. But, you know, I don't know about a retrial. A retrial seems a little bit iffy. I mean, they tried the guy, I think, on 19 counts of trying to kill this woman. So, you know, I don't know how you give a guy like that a retrial. But what I will say is i don't think joe exotic is any worse

than the rest of them okay at j connor underscore asks can only do cardio during this quarantine plus cutting will i lose muscle lots of fat to lose uh yeah you're gonna lose muscle if you're in a deficit and you're not training uh if you're in a deficit not training and eating adequate protein that'll help if you're in a deficit, not training and eating adequate protein, that'll help. If you're in a deficit, eating adequate protein and doing resistance training, that'll make a big difference. But I think as far as a recipe for losing muscle fast would be, I'd say be doing lots of low-intensity cardio in a calorie deficit with an adequate protein. So at jconner underscore, you are not in a good situation here if that's really how you

want to play this out. If your goal is minimizing muscle loss, what I would do is I would incorporate some degree of body weight training in conjunction with your cardio. That will help a little bit by, again, stimulating mTOR, telling those muscles, dude, I need you to stick around. You can't just peel off. But I'm seeing a lot of conflict in this question. Can only do cardio during this quarantine and cutting? If you can do cardio, you've got enough space to drop and do some body weight exercises, right? Will I lose some muscle? Yeah, of course. But if you're doing a diet in general, you're going to lose muscle,

even if you are resistance training, right? So if you have a lot of fat to lose, that's fine, but I wouldn't recommend losing a ton of muscle along with it. That's generally a recipe for some degree of metabolic adaptation. It's not the best thing in the world to be losing a lot of muscle while you cut, especially if you have the ability to manage that with resistance training. So do be careful. All right. Underscore always evolving asks, which supplements do you recommend for muscle growth in people over 50? Steroids. No, I'm kidding. But yes, in all seriousness, steroids are very effective. But if you want steroid-like results at 50, the best thing you can do right out of the gate is increase the amount of sleep you're getting on a day-to-day

basis. That's going to make a huge difference, okay? I know it's not a supplement. I know it's not what you want to hear. But get your sleep up. In conjunction with that, you might try something like ashwagandha, which is an adaptogen that may help modulate some hormonal response, but it's non-hormonal in the sense of how you take it. But that's kind of woo-woo. As far as just concrete data shows, this is going to help. A little bit of creatine, a little bit of fish oil, probably going to make the biggest difference.

You want about 2 to 4 grams of fish oil to get the most out of it. And you want about five grams of creatine a day, 2.5 to four grams, 2.5 to five grams of creatine a day to get the most out of it. If you're taking those, you should be able to, again, manage your training stressors a little bit better, push hard, recover faster. Some of the things people in their 50s might struggle with, but overall, it's the same recipe for everybody else. Get your sleep, get your protein, keep your stress down, take a few supplements and make sure that the few that you take are high quality. All right?

All right, and last question is from Cassie Bergen. Any advice for sore knees, especially after heavy squat days? So I don't think it's abnormal to have some degree of soreness in the knee area, quad area, even hamstring area after heavy squats, particularly high volume heavy squats. But one thing I would be really cautious about is if after every time you squat, regardless of how heavy it is, whether it's really heavy or it's high volume or even a light day, if you're getting pain and it's high volume or even a light day, if you're getting pain and inflammation in the joint capsule or the knee itself, the knee joint,

you might want to take a look at your form and technique. One of the joints that's hardest to mess up, I would say, is probably that knee. The elbow and the knee tend to be pretty good for most people in how they move. They're simpler joints than something like a hip or a shoulder. And what I've typically found with people who have extraneous elbow pain or extraneous knee pain is they're often training outside a range of motion that they probably should be. They might be overextending themselves. They might be loading too much in a range of motion

they don't have a lot of control over. And those perhaps more stable, smoother moving joints really pay for it as things get passed up and down the kinetic chain. And knee stuff in general, when we talk about squats and knee pain, I'll often say, you know, it's usually going to be depth, but we can usually adjust it with just changing the mechanics of the squat, right? Because you can go into something like a hip dominant squat. You can minimize how much flexion and extension are occurring in the knee joint and how much stress is on it by changing to things like even half squats, quarter squats, or box squats. I mean, if your goal is performance, you don't have to squat like purely ass to grass all the time anyway. But if you're dealing with

knee pain, it's definitely worth checking out your form, making sure that everything's aligned for optimal knee, hip, spine, ankle health when you're squatting. And remember, like for a lot of people, you're going to need about 10 to 15 degrees of external rotation at the feet to allow the hips to open up, to let the torso and the kind of pelvis drop down for the squat. And the knees have to kind of bring all of that together. They're that big, big joint that's going to go bam and it's going to drop down and you're going to need those knees to really do a lot of work. But if your feet are out of alignment, your hips are out of alignment, your spine's out of alignment, they might have to work even harder.

So, you know, for a lot of people, their knees might just be overdoing it because of the way they're setting things up. A lot of times that's feet too close or they're perhaps cueing the movement too much by just initiating a ton of forward knee travel right at the gate. So first things first, before you think you're broken or there's anything wrong, take a look at your form, especially if you're younger, take a look at your form first. And if it persists, definitely see a professional and see if maybe you can adjust the ranges of motion that you train in. All right, guys. So that is it. That does it for today's episode

of the podcast. Again, this has been awesome. I hope you guys are safe and everything is going well with COVID-19. I hope we don't have any issues uploading this podcast. I did have some trouble with iTunes last week, or actually yesterday, Monday, particularly with an episode I did with Laurie King. So if you're here and you just finished this, but you haven't heard the episode I did with Laurie King, check that one out. That's an awesome interview. You'll like that a lot. As for the rest of the week, I've got an amazing interview planned with Austin Current. I also have some coming up with Dr. Eric Helms, Dr. Gab Fundaro, who's a gut health specialist, and Dr. Eric Trexler. And we're going to be talking about some really cool things, everything from veganism to, again, gut health

and even metabolic adaptation, the stuff you guys want to know about. I'm trying to bring the best experts in the space together to give you that information while I sit back and listen and ask questions on your behalf. You guys have an amazing day. Stay fit. And remember, it's always a good day to be a good person.