Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 163: How Bad are The Governments Fitness Guidelines + My Current Training
Episode Date: February 10, 2022Thanks For Listening!SUPPORT THE SHOW:There is NOTHING more valuable to a podcast than leaving a written review and 5-Star Rating. Please consider taking 1-2 minutes to do that HERE.You can also leave... a review on SPOTIFY!OUR PARTNERS:Legion Supplements (protein, creatine, + more!), Shop (DANNY) HERE!Get Your FREE LMNT Electrolytes HERE! Care for YOUR Gut, Heart and Skin with SEED Symbiotic (save with “DANNY15) HERE!RESOURCES/COACHING: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 Coach Danny to Fix Your S*** (training, nutrition, lifestyle, etc) fill the form HERE for a chance to have your current approach reviewed live on the show. 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:Sign up for the trainer mentorship HEREFollow Coach Danny on INSTAGRAMFollow Coach Danny on TwitterFollow Coach Danny on FacebookGet More In-Depth Articles Written By Yours’ Truly HERE!Support the Show.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Welcome in everybody to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. I'm recording this
episode on the second day of February. I cannot believe we are already through the first month
of 2022. You know, growing up, my dad used to always say that time travels faster the older
you get. I would always say, oh my gosh, my birthday feels
like it's so far away. Or, oh my gosh, Christmas feels like it's so far away. And he would always
say, enjoy it while it lasts because it only moves faster. And I'm starting to experience that. I'm
not sure if you guys have felt the same thing too, but time just feels like it's moving increasingly
more quickly. And again, a month is about give or or take, 8% or 9% of a year.
So here we are, 8% of the way through the year. Always a good reminder here on these episodes that come out in early February to just for all of you who set resolutions, who set New Year's
goals, who have ambitious targets that might be on a calendar, particularly spread out over the
course of a year, if you fell behind in the first month, don't panic. Still plenty of time to get started. Still plenty of time to reach for those goals and hopefully achieve them.
Today's episode is going to be a fun one. We're going to get into some of your guys' questions.
I have a ton of them fielded here from Instagram, probably at least 20. We'll go rapid fire. We'll
talk a little bit about Bulgarian split squats. We'll talk quite a bit about protein powder
consumption. There's a few questions on that. How often you should train your core or abs if you want them to be stronger, which I think
is always something that I get quite a bit of a question about. We're going to talk a little bit
about how you might train for something congruently, meaning like martial arts and weightlifting. We'll
talk a little bit about macro splits, how one might calculate macros,
L-theanine, lots of good questions in here. But before we get into the Q&A,
two primary sections of the episode today, we're going to talk about fitness guidelines set forth
by the government here in the United States, particularly some from the CDC, a little
interesting experiment. And again, I know the CDC and the United States government are particularly
triggering for people, especially in this hyper-polarized, politicized landscape. Very, very challenging post-pandemic, entering towards the end of the pandemic window here. Very divided. So if you just had enough of COVID, you don't want to talk anymore about COVID, this is not that discussion. You don't have to worry. We're just going to talk a little bit about this. And I did a little interesting experiment, a poll on my Instagram. Then I'm
going to dive into some of the finer details of my current training. I'm going to share my current
training split with you guys, talk a little bit about an exciting new product coming your way
towards the beginning of April that I cannot wait to share with you. And then we'll get into the Q&A.
So first and foremost, I guess I'd like to let you guys in on this exciting thing
that's coming. I am working on some programming that will be app-based that you can take with you
to the gym and another app-based program that you can do from home with just dumbbells and bands.
So the primary rollout of these programs, one of which is going to be an extension of my very
popular female physique eBooks that are still available on the core coaching method website.
Those are female specific bodybuilding programs. I'm going to be launching an app based program
called elite physique that will allow you to take programming to the gym with exercise tutorials,
sets reps. There will be a community component
with lots of discussion between you and the other members of this team. You'll be able to
directly communicate with myself, Coach Matt, and Coach Sylvia, all the members of the Core
Coaching Method team. You'll be able to track PRs, share PRs, have that community. It's certainly not
a replacement for our coaching services.
You will not get the same one-on-one attention. You will not get a fully customized program.
It will not be built to your constraints, etc. But if you're looking to optimize your experience in the gym, you're already going a few days a week, this is going to be an amazing offering
for you. So stay tuned as I talk more about that in the coming weeks and months.
Additionally, I'm also going to be bringing to you a very similar program that can be done from
home. Again, it's going to be focused primarily on what I would describe as muscular development.
It will be a great program for both men and women looking to maintain body composition or improve
body composition from home, working with minimal
space and minimal equipment. That program will use just dumbbells and bands that will focus
mostly on compound movements, movement progressions, mobility, core training. So those two programs
will launch at the beginning of April. I've partnered with Train Heroic to make sure that
the technology and the app is phenomenal.
It's not glitchy and it's effective. That is something that was really, really important to me.
I'm very excited to bring these to you again, substantially more fleshing out to do,
but I wanted to put that on your radar because many of you have been asking about this for quite some time. So I'm pretty excited to bring that to you. Okay, so let's talk about the government
fitness guidelines, or more specifically, the fitness and nutrition guidelines set forth by
the CDC. So I asked on my Instagram poll what the general consensus was amongst my following. I kept
this poll up for about two hours. I didn't need to keep it up much longer than that to gather a ton
of data, and I figured that it opened the door up much longer than that to gather a ton of data. And I figured
that it opened the door for political discourse on that platform, which I try to avoid. It's not
that I'm apolitical. It's not that I don't have political opinions. And it's certainly not that
I'm afraid to communicate my political opinions. I've just tried as best I can to keep that stuff
off of my Instagram. I get a little bit too into the weeds on Twitter,
which is my own mistake, but I don't want people's feeds, particularly on Facebook-specific
platforms like Facebook or Instagram, to have any more politics. And while these aren't particularly
political, unfortunately, whenever you bring up the CDC, it can get political. And I got a couple
of DMs almost immediately from people that were clearly agitated. And I just didn't want to have,
I didn't have the time for that. So here were the questions that I asked. Here were the answers.
Here's what I thought was fascinating. So the first thing I posted was an image from the CDC's
website. This is their exercise guidelines. Very clearly, very easy to access. If you're curious,
you can look up CDC exercise guidelines and they
have a very large infographic at the top of the page that says move more and sit less.
Adults should move more and sit less throughout the day. Physical activity, some physical activity
is better than none. Adults who sit less and do any amount of moderate to vigorous intense activity
will gain health benefits. How much do I need? Well, they recommend 150 minutes a week of moderate
intensity aerobic activity,
anything that gets your heart beating faster counts,
and at least two days a week of muscle strengthening activities,
which are activities that make your muscles
work harder than normal.
They have a picture of a guy lifting weights
and a picture of a guy, a stick figure doing pushups.
And so I asked,
do you think that this is generally good exercise advice?
And 98% of you said yes. I then asked what you thought of the nutritional guidelines. The most prominent infographic on the site said that a good diet emphasizes fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fat-free milk, low-fat milk, and milk products, includes a large variety of proteins such as seafood, lean meats, poultry, eggs, legumes, beans, peas, soy products, nuts, and seeds, is low in saturated fats, trans fats, cholesterol, salt, sodium, and added sugars,
and stays within your calorie needs. 97% of you guys said that this was generally good
nutritional advice. I then asked, and this was funny to me, do you think that the government
is capable of providing generally good exercise and nutritional guidelines? I asked this question last and 67% of you said no. So it was funny to me that on average, 97%
of you guys between 98 and 90, so 97.5% of you guys said you liked the CDC's guidelines for
exercise. 97%, 97 and a half percent, if you split the difference, said you liked the CDC's
nutritional guidelines. But 67% of you said that the government was incapable of providing these things. And I'm
not saying that the government is good or bad. I'm not saying that there haven't been inefficiencies.
I'm not saying that the CDC has done a good job of messaging on COVID. I'm just saying that it's
very clear and very apparent to me that we've become very, very disillusioned with
whether or not we can trust our doctors, whether or not we can trust the government with our health.
And I absolutely, absolutely believe that the first and most important person or entity when
it comes to your health is you. And you've got to accept responsibility more than
probably your doctor and certainly more than the government, right? But we've also become
increasingly calloused about the government's interest in our health, particularly those in
the fitness space. I see a lot of people who say things like, if the government really cared about
your health, they wouldn't talk about getting the vaccine. They just tell you to move more and eat
healthier, as if it were that simple to combat the obesity epidemic. I see a lot of this coming from personal
trainers, which is deeply frustrating to me because it's like, bro, you do understand that
if in fact people listened to the government, which they don't, and most of the people who
make these comments particularly have a disdain for the government, if they were to just say, everybody needs to move
more and eat less, and that magically moved the 300 million plus Americans to move more and eat
less and killed the obesity epidemic, that every personal trainer would be out of a fucking job
for the most part. I mean, not every single one, but quite a few of them would be out of a job.
It's not that simple. And I do think that it takes, like I said, nothing more than a Google
to find the fact that the CDC, for all of the messaging errors in COVID, for all of the
frustrations around the mandates and the lockdowns, and I'll be the first to tell you, I am pro-vaccine
and anti-mandate. And I think that that is a very reasonable place to be in February 2nd of 2022
with everything that's going on. And I'm not saying that you should be
any more, any less frustrated with how COVID went, but it takes one Google to find that the
guidelines are generally sound. And while the messaging of people in politics could absolutely
be better and we could absolutely amplify politicians who want to discuss things like,
you know, healthier lifestyle changes and how we could
encourage that at the population level. It definitely seems like people are disillusioned
with the institutions, our society's institutions, and their ability to encourage us to live
healthier, even if they give generally sound advice, if you went to per se, let's just go
look for it. So I did find that disparity to be
quite fascinating. The last piece of that question I asked people, do you think this advice came from
California State University Health Services, Kaiser Permanente, my website, or the CDC?
And more people selected my website than they did the CDC with the California University Health Services,
which is something I completely made up, coming in third, and Kaiser Permanente coming last.
So to me, that's also quite funny because another institution that people are rightfully
displeased with oftentimes are for-profit insurance companies where we pay so much
money every month in health insurance. and oftentimes our health is only really treated or cared for if there's an absolute emergency,
which isn't to say don't have health insurance. You absolutely need it, especially if you live
in a state like California where they fine the shit out of you for not having it. But it is
something that to me is quite fascinating how quickly we've become disillusioned in many ways for good reasons and
in some ways perhaps for political reasons. So anyway, moving on from that, I thought that was
an interesting thought experiment worth sharing. I want to talk a little bit about my current
training split. So I'm currently following a push-pull leg split, but it's not a seven-day
split because my schedule is a little hectic. On average, I can train five out of every seven
days. I can train for about an hour and a half to two hours on the weekend. I generally take my time
and I'll film a few pieces of content while I'm in my garage gym, which I absolutely love.
I do quite a bit on the weekends, whether it's working on my fish tanks, working with getting
my clients their check-ins because that's something
that I do on the weekends. I spend time with my lovely girlfriend on the weekends. I take the dog
out on the weekends. That's also my decompression time. And then during the week, I have a lot of
things that I'm doing with the podcast, clients that I'm communicating with across the week via
email. I still see one-on-one clients in person for at least 35 sessions a week.
So that's basically a 40-hour-a-week job, just seeing clients Monday through Friday,
in addition to operating the podcast, in addition to operating the business,
and my online business core coaching method, in addition to having the dog,
in addition to having a girlfriend.
All these things take time.
So during the week, I'm only able to probably get three 60 to 90 minute workouts in.
I take usually Mondays and Fridays off and I train Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday.
And so what I will tend to do is legs on that first session of the week, followed by a push day and a pull day. Then there's a day off. Then when I get
to the weekends, I always reserve one weekend day for legs. That way I can have a nice hour and a
half, two hour leg day. And then that last day is either a push day, a pull day, or a total upper
body day before I rest again on Monday and repeat. Uh, with that Monday would, if I did, so for example, if I did legs on Saturday, upper body on Sunday,
Monday would be legs again. If I did push on Sunday, Monday would be pull. I would do pull
on Sunday, then push on Monday. Then Tuesday would be the leg day. So it's a little bit more dynamic.
It's a little bit more fluid. It works really well for my schedule, especially if I have to miss a day.
So why I like this is if, for example, I can only train four days that week and I see it coming,
I know I'll have an upper and a lower session on the weekends, which will be very effective.
But then when I get to the Monday through Friday, all I'm looking to do is consolidate those push pull days into one session. And then I'm only looking to find an hour or so
to train two days a week, Monday through Friday,
which I can absolutely do.
And if I want, I can wake up early
at four o'clock in the morning
and make sure that I get that done before I see sessions.
That's never been a problem for me.
But that's my current split.
As for the exercises that I'm focusing on,
I figured I'd go by body part.
I'm currently focusing on developing the back squat and the Bulgarian split squat. Those are the two big quad movements I'm focusing on. I figured I'd go by body part. I'm currently focusing on developing
the back squat and the Bulgarian split squat. Those are the two big quad movements I'm doing.
I'm focusing quite a bit on Romanian deadlifts and Nordic ham curls. Those are the two posterior
chain movements that I'm doing. I'm doing a lot of calf raises, particularly prior to my heavy
leg training so I can make sure that my calves are getting attention and I'm not neglecting them.
I'm spending a lot of time focusing on my arms and incorporating intensity techniques like
blood flow restriction training. For chest, I'm doing a lot of cable flies and dips as my primary
movements. I'm doing a lot of behind the back lateral raises, dumbbell upright rows, cable
lateral raises, face pulls, front raises, and overhead presses to help develop my
delts. And for the back, I'm doing a lot of chest supported lat pull rows, the N1 style chest
supported row. I'm doing a lot of rhomboid and upper back work. Those are the big areas of focus.
And those are the things that are getting sprinkled in across my week and progressed. And I've really
enjoyed those. And I've found that in seeing such
good results with some of these movements, they're actually showing up quite a bit in the programming
I'm doing for my online clients, as well as the clients that I'm doing in person. So my constant
pursuit and exploration in this bleeds into what I do with clients. And I think that's really fun
and it keeps it fresh. 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.
So getting into your guys' questions. This first question comes from Joey G555. He asks,
three weeks of a slight deficit and one week at maintenance a month. Is that a good plan for recomp or should I just be at maintenance? So from a definition standpoint, recomp is a body compositional change that's basically occurring
at maintenance. So if we're talking about achieving true definitive recomp, you wouldn't
be in a deficit three days a week. If we're talking about changing the composition of your
body and we're using recomp as an umbrella term, I think that three weeks consecutively in a slight deficit followed by one week a month at maintenance where we're
maybe trying perhaps a little bit too cautiously to catch any metabolic adaptation before it occurs,
I think that would be fine. Particularly if you're a conservative dieter, you're not operating on a
time crunch. I think that that can be really, really helpful. And I think that that might be
a good approach. It's definitely something that I'd recommend. And I think for people who are
willing to diet more slowly, taking a week at maintenance or even a couple days at maintenance,
a lot of people will call that a refeed. That can be really valuable. All right, next question,
another diet question. This one comes from neumhs.fit. Macros, please. More carbs or fats. What comes next after protein? So when I'm
constructing macronutrient programs for my clients or macronutrition programs for my clients,
I always start with protein. For the largest majority of the clients that we work with,
we're probably working and operating within a range of 0.7 to 1 grams of protein per pound of body weight.
There are some exceptions. So for individuals that we work with who are larger or have more
body fat, you can't necessarily do a gram per pound. So I'll give you an example. If a client
comes to me and they're 300 pounds, I'm not going to give them a 1 gram of protein per pound of
body weight. Not because I think 300 grams of protein is particularly bad for your health. I do think it's excessive. And I think in the long term,
that could be harmful. I just think that 300 grams of protein is massively and wildly impractical.
So how you get around that is you might work off of either goal weight, which tends to be a little
bit more subjective. And I don't particularly like lean body mass, which tends to be a little bit more subjective, and I don't particularly like lean body mass, which tends to be a little bit better. Now, on the flip side, if I get an
individual who comes to me and they're operating on a really constrained energy model, or they just
have a hard time getting in a lot of protein because of the dietary constraints of either
not being able to have that many calories or not being able to eat a lot of animal protein because let's say they're vegan. And to get a high amount of protein would mean
incurring a substantial amount of additional carbs and fats. This tends to be the case for
a lot of the plant-based proteins. You can't necessarily get a lot of protein in isolation
unless you're really loading up on things like tempeh, plant protein powders, soy, etc.,
which I think for many plant-based
eaters becomes redundant. I would also skew a little bit more towards that 0.7 end of the
threshold. But for clients who come to us who want to either build muscle or lose body fat,
I find that that 0.7 to one range is really, really valuable. After I've established protein,
I look at body fat, or I'm sorry, not body fat, dietary fat. I guess I look at body fat percentage in the intake form, but I look at dietary fat because when we talk about nutrients being essential, protein is essential, fat is essential, carbohydrates are not essential, meaning you can live without them, but theoretically, if you're training hard and you want to develop your physique and you want your diet to be
sustainable, I think all three are essential. It's just in what amounts, but the problems
that will arise from going low carb for a couple of days compared to going low protein or low fat
tend to be a little bit less impactful. So if you go low carb for a few days, you don't get
enough carbs. You might be lightheaded. You might be irritable, you might have some blood sugar dysregulation. If you are too low on protein or too low on fat, the ramifications or let's call them the side effects are worse.
essential particularly for hormone formation, for the integrity of our cell membranes,
for our brain health, and going too low on your fat, particularly for women, can cause...
I've found this to be very true of women who generally tend to diet on low fat.
They will lose their menstrual cycle quite quickly in some cases, not all cases. And I can tell you of at least three to five women that I've worked with
that have come to me on what I would describe as decent macros. They're not completely starved.
If a girl comes to me on 1,200 to 1,400 calories and she's not really, really, really tiny and she
tells me, yeah, I don't have a period, it never surprises me. But every once in a while, I'll get
a female client who comes to me on 1,800 to 1800 to 2000 calories, which seems to generally be enough for a woman to maintain her menstrual
cycle, but she doesn't have one. And I look at the macro breakdown and she's eating 30 to 40
grams of fat. And I immediately want to raise that up into a range that's a little closer to
what I would describe as essential. And you can do about a body weight times 0.3. I tend to find that that that's a
little bit of a higher end of the range, but that tends to work well. Um, these women oftentimes
will get their menstrual cycle back very quickly when you bring the fats back in because it can
help that way. I'm not a doctor. I'm not an expert. Don't listen to anything I have to say about this
stuff, please. But that's something that I have found works really well. So I established protein.
I established fat,
which if we're dieting, I tend to keep on the lower end
because of the caloric impact of fat,
nine calories per gram, remember.
But I never go too low
because I don't want to jeopardize the health of cells,
the brain, the reproductive system,
our ability to produce sex hormones, et cetera.
So that stuff to me is really, really important.
Okay, next question comes from Sonia Marine. She asks, what are your thoughts on reverse dieting? When would it be
appropriate or needed? I think that reverse dieting is a good way to reintroduce calories
for individuals who've been dieting for a long time, working on a constrained energy model,
who maybe are dealing with some, let's call it disordered eating, and they're really apprehensive
about adding calories back. If you're not dealing with things like a lost period, you're not dealing with
things like poor sleep, getting cold. If you're running labs and you see that your thyroid is
healthy, if you're not running labs and you don't know where your thyroid's at, your testosterone's
at, your estrogen's at, and you're competing or you're getting super lean, you might be doing
yourself a disservice. And I've actually partnered with Merrick Health, who does all my labs, to bring you guys discounted
high-quality labs that give you the opportunity to get a full panel done, your metabolic panel,
your cholesterol panel, your sex hormone panel, a bunch of different things that you'd want to
know about with regards to transport proteins, all of your minerals, all your vitamins, different
blood stuff, different immune stuff. With a discount, you'll get to actually sit
down with a patient care coordinator to go over all the numbers and a physician to see if you're
potentially, you know, a candidate for a pharmaceutical intervention, a supplemental
intervention, and they always recommend supplemental and lifestyle interventions
ahead of pharmaceutical intervention. So a lot of you guys were going crazy asking me questions about labs. And so I have reached out
to a lab servicer that I really respect, but one that will also guide you through it because I know
that not everybody is data literate. Not everybody is scientifically literate. Not everybody has
the ability to just decipher where their hormones should or shouldn't be based on a printout.
the ability to just decipher where their hormones should or shouldn't be based on a printout.
So I will be soft launching that partnership, I guess, here, but I'll be telling you guys more about it. That was something that I really wanted to bring on for our clients at Core Coaching
Method because I think that there are oftentimes situations where I need that kind of insight
and I need to have a partner I can trust. But for those of you who have been asking,
that partnership will be going live soon and you can get all of the labs you want, the full comprehensive plan for men,
the full comprehensive plan for women, plus a discount. And again, the opportunity to have a
patient care coordinator guide you through everything so that you can make sure you're
in the optimal range and even the physician add-on for really cheap so you can talk to a doctor.
And if you do need a pharmaceutical intervention, they can easily write you a prescription for that. But anyway, back to
the question. For those of you who are looking to reverse diet, I do think that hormonally you
need to be in a good spot. If you're wrecked and your thyroid is wrecked and you're cold all the
time and your mood is shitty and you don't have a libido, I think adding calories in slowly
in the name of maybe managing your body composition a little bit better is short-sighted and a little
bit foolish. So I wouldn't necessarily recommend doing that if you could avoid it. Next question
is Kelsey Beth. Knee pain when squatting, even at a low weight, what should I do first to try to help?
I can't assess knee pain over a podcast and I'm not really qualified to give you any specific treatment advice. But what I can tell
you is that squats aren't for everybody. And you might try another form of squatting, see if that's
a little bit more agreeable on the knees. And you can also try training the posterior chain in
advance of training the squat. John Meadows, may he rest in peace, the great John Meadows,
Mountain Dog 01, a true OG in peace, the great John Meadows Mountain
Dog 01, a true OG in the fitness space, somebody I've looked up to for a long time, was a big fan
of doing lying hamstring curls before squats. He said it made his knees feel better. I completely
concur. It's something I've done for many, many years and I absolutely love it. Okay, this question
comes from Michelle Lebleu. She says, when doing the Bulgarian split squat, how high should my back foot be?
Former client of mine, Michelle.
I hope you're doing well, Michelle.
I always love seeing former clients of mine
who reach their goals interacting and engaging with us.
Like it's so cool to see people staying engaged with it
years and years and years after
or months and months and months after.
But the Bulgarian split squat is,
what we're really talking about here is elevating the rear
foot. So how high should the back foot be? And if you put it too high up that it starts to actually
move your hip back into extension, you're going to feel a ton of strain in the hip flexor on the
trail leg. And I don't necessarily love that. I think that the height of the average bench at a
gym is probably going to be okay. I think any higher than that and you're probably going to run into trouble. Something that you can do that tends to work really well is you can use the Smith machine to set the bar up, I would say about the same height as the knee. And then once you've set the bar up there, you can use a bar pad, something that you might use for squatting or wrap a towel around it and use that to elevate the trail leg.
They also make some great split squat stands that I think are awesome that generally are adjustable.
But for most people, the height is going to be somewhere between the top of the calf
and the bottom of the hamstring or right there on the knee joint. Okay. So this question says,
new to protein powder consumption, using it as a meal or fuel before workout.
This one's from Judy with six E's.
And so I love protein powder.
I think it's awesome.
And I think that having some before your workout is probably a great idea if you're looking to increase your total protein across the day and getting some protein in before you
train is helpful for you.
But it's not training fuel.
You see, when we resistance train,
or even when we do cardio, we're going to be predominantly using carbs as our fuel source,
or lipids as our fuel source. Protein isn't really a fuel. It's more of something that we
use for tissue repair and tissue integrity. So getting it in before your workout will help a lot
with your recovery, but not so much with fuel. The best fuel sources
you have are things like water, electrolytes, and of course, carbohydrates. Electrolytes really help
with muscle contractility. Hydration, of course, is important. And carbohydrates are the fuel that
makes the whole thing go. So if you're looking for a pre-workout fuel source, I would do a
carbohydrate with two different forms. So something that's glucose
dominant and fructose dominant. So like cereal with fruit, and then you can pair that with a
protein product, whether that be a whole foods form of protein or a shake. My favorite protein
shake is Legion's Whey Plus. Legion makes the creatine, vitamin, fish oil, greens powder,
and protein I take. I absolutely love their products. You can
swipe down in the show notes and shop at legion.com, checking out using the promo code Danny
to save 20% and earn two times points that can be used the same as cash. They make awesome stuff,
and I totally recommend their products. So this question comes from Elma Custo, and she asks,
if you want strong abs, how often should
you train them? And I would say about as often as you train anything else that you'd want to be
strong for natural lifters. We're usually looking for a frequency of somewhere between two to three
days a week. And I would say that that stands true here. Abs tend to be something you can train a
little bit more frequently based on the fact that there's a lot of different muscles that do a lot
of different functions. So you could get away with training them every day,
but you know, you've got flexion, anti-extension, rotation, anti-rotation, lateral flexion,
anti-lateral flexion, um, you know, throwing, which is kind of total body, but incorporates
a lot of abs, things like swinging, things like sprinting that are more dynamic, medicine ball work that it's
like multi-planar, like med ball slams, med ball throws. There's so many different functions of
the core that if you want to get creative, you could probably space it out daily. All right,
this question comes from J. Figgy Newton. He says, I've started training martial arts and lifting.
Is it okay to work out every day, even when I'm sore? So because you've just started martial arts, I'm imagining you're going to be sore for a while because anytime you start something new physically and you start to recruit muscles in ways that they haven't been recruited and fire motor neurons in ways that are inefficient and can often lead to soreness, you might just be dealing with this for a while and taking too many breaks and waiting to not be sore might mean not training very often. But if you're over training and you're sore from that, then taking a break and not working out
every day would be really smart. So I would say that just in general, it's never a good idea to
work out or train every day. But if you're so new to this that like you're getting wrecked every
session, no matter what, I would expect that to generally fade with time. All right, you guys,
thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of the podcast. I really appreciate it. If you have one minute and you
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