Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 2 - 5 supplements to take and 5 to throw out! (PLUS MORE)!

Episode Date: March 11, 2020

In this episode, Danny reviews the FIVE supplements he things everyone should take, and the FIVE people throw money away buying. We also discuss the state of the NBA, NFL, and a few streaming options on Disney plus and Netflix.For more information check out Danny on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danny.matranga/For coaching, programs, free guides, and more, check on the website: https://www.coachdannymatranga.com Support the Show.

Hey, welcome back to the Dynamic Dialogues podcast. This is episode two now, and with all the pomp and circumstance behind us, we can get to work. Today's episode is all about supplements. I'm going to tell you the five supplements you need to have in your supplement cabinet in your routine, and five that you can throw away if you have, or at least be sure that you never fall victim to purchasing. Now, before we get into that, I got some exciting things to update you about and just talk about in general. I got done filming some amazing content with my man Christian over the weekend. We've got tons of videos coming your way for various platforms, things designed for trainers, things designed

for lifters, everything from how to teach your client the proper way to hinge their hips, common mistakes made when performing the lat pulldown, a full advanced ab tutorial, calf training tips, just to name a few. So that will all be available for free on various platforms. And speaking of free, if you head over to my website, www.coachdanymetrenga.com, and click the free resources tab, you'll see I've uploaded two free guides, one of which will supplement this episode today. So please go check that out. That is the top five supplements you need to take. And there's about eight or nine other free guides for you right there on the website that will provide value to your life and everything from becoming a better personal trainer to losing body fat to training your glutes, all of that stuff. So as it stands right now, I have survived the coronavirus. I feel a little bit better. Again,

I don't really actually think I had the coronavirus, but you know, it's fun to catastrophize. Speaking of catastrophizing, the American political scene has been all over the place. Of course, the coronavirus has been in the headlines, but we've now narrowed it down to two primary Democratic candidates, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, both of whom will be kind of vying for their shot at President Trump in the 2020 primary, or not primary, general election in November. I probably will vote for either of them unless something absolutely insane happens. I tend to lean blue, but I'm quite actually interested in who you guys would vote for. And feel free to tell

me on Instagram, shoot me a DM, drop a comment, anything like that. I'm actually quite interested in people's political stance. As far as things pop culture go, I'm three episodes into the seventh season of Star Wars Clone Wars on Disney+. If you know anything about me, you know I quite enjoy Star Wars, but this has not been a very enjoyable season so far. We're three episodes in and I'm, you know, a little bit disappointed. No spoilers, nothing's really happened yet. We all know how it ends, or at least anybody who's seen the series knows how it ends. But one thing I have quite enjoyed is the second season of Paradise PD on Netflix. If you're a fan of incredibly raunchy animated comedies, Paradise PD is a show you'll enjoy a lot. It takes all of your kind of fundamental animated

comedy show tropes that you see on things like Family Guy, Robot Chicken, American Dad, and takes it to the uncensored subscription service place that only something like an HBO or Netflix can. It's very raunchy, definitely not safe for family, but the first season was incredible, and the second season is solid. In the sports world, we got to see LeBron versus Giannis, prime time on Friday night, and that was as advertised. It was incredible. You know, LeBron at 35 years old is holding up like no athlete I have ever seen. I remember when LeBron James was drafted into the NBA.

I was nine years old. And it seems like he's had two or three separate career arcs, watching the guy go from barely being able to get Cleveland into the playoffs, from single-handedly taking them to the finals, to leaving Cleveland to go to Miami, winning championships in Miami, going back to Cleveland, winning a championship in Cleveland, having so many battles against the Warriors in what was one of the best rivalries I think we've ever seen. And then we had the opportunity to watch him go to the Lakers and he's having this like unbelievable resurgence at 35. And, you know, I'm just really grateful as a sports fan.

I've gotten to watch LeBron James play at such a high level for so long. There's no doubt in my mind he's the best who's ever done it. Some might say it was Michael Jordan, but again, I am just so impressed that Giannis came to play, but LeBron is absolutely spectacular. Also, speaking of basketball and speaking of the Warriors, who I mentioned earlier, it's great to see Stephen Curry back. I mean, he's good for basketball, but he's good for the world. If you ever want to watch somebody who really loves their job, watch Steph Curry, because as easy as it might seem to play NBA basketball professionally, having friends who

are in the strength and conditioning world and work with these guys, a lot of these dudes spend a ton of time away from their family. They have the hardest travel schedule of any professional athlete. They play 82 games in about 120 days. They travel across multiple time zones all the time. But the smile that Steph Curry has on his face when he plays the game of basketball is pretty incredible. So it's unbelievably exciting to have him back. And the NFL Combine's wrapped up. We're only weeks now away from the draft. I'm sure we all are excited for that. And if you don't like sports, pop culture, anything I've been talking about, now we can start talking about the stuff that really matters here, which are the five supplements you need to have and the five you can throw away. The way I'm going to go

through this is one to keep, one to toss, one at a time. And we'll start with the number one supplement I recommend to all my clientele, and that is creatine, particularly creatine monohydrate. Now, why creatine? Why do I recommend it? What does it do? Number one, let's talk about how it works. Creatine actually works by helping us produce ATP. ATP, if you remember back to high school, is the cellular currency that we use for every single transaction or energy thing we do in our body. If we're going to do something, it's going to take ATP. And every time we use ATP or spend it on something, if you will, it gets broken down into a compound called ADP. That would be adenosine diphosphate. ATP is adenosine triphosphate.

What that means is you have adenosine, right, which is a nucleic acid, adenine anyway, adenosine bound to phosphate, an inorganic phosphate, and that would be the back end of that. So you have adenosine bound to either triphosphate, ATP, which would be three, or diphosphate, which would be two. When you do something in the body, you cleave a phosphate off and you go from ATP to ADP. Creatine helps bring that phosphate back to ADP and helps with reintroducing ATP back into the body more quickly than we otherwise would had we not had creatine. It's something that we naturally create in our bodies and we can get it from animal product, but for people who lift or have more muscle mass, a little extra creatine seems to go a very long way. It's the single most studied sports performance supplement. It's effective in ways that you wouldn't expect for something that's non-hormonal, increasing recovery, increasing strength outputs, increasing the intensity at which you can lift,

the duration at which you can lift at said intensities, and it's quite affordable and very inexpensive. Now, that being said, there are many types of creatine on the market, the likes of which can be sold for various amounts of money, some ranging from very affordable, some very expensive. The more expensive creatine types we typically call designer creatines, and those are creatines that are usually bound to something fancy or some type of buffer, and they're often touting their digestibility, but plain and simple creatine monohydrate, which is just a creatine molecule bound to one hydrate, one water, seems to perform the best in research, and it's also the most affordable.

The brand I recommend for this is Legion Athletics, and the product I like is called ReCharge. And if you want to grab that, you can head over to legionathletics.com, put the promo code Danny in the checkout promo code box, and you'll save 20% off your first order. So additionally, muscle growth, muscle recovery, and performance aren't the only things creatine seems to help. There's a ton of emerging research that shows creatine can be effective at improving cognitive health in older adults, people with Parkinson's disease, people with Alzheimer's, seems to help. There's a ton of emerging research that shows creatine can be effective at improving cognitive health in older adults, people with Parkinson's disease, people with Alzheimer's,

a lot of emerging research. And that's quite, quite important considering that cognitive decline has become a new issue in our culture that's so pervasive and affects so many lives. And supplementing with creatine might be an effective, affordable and effective therapy for a lot of people. So there's a lot of promise there. And it's a reason that I have almost every single one of my clients take it, including some of my clients who are well into their advanced age, I'm talking 70s and 80s, and they have noticed a difference in their performance as well as their cognitive capacity. And while anecdote does not an effective argument make, I think that my personal experience, coupled with the experience of most strength coaches,

the anecdotes I'll present to you from my clients, as well as the massive amount of scientific data to support creatine being effective as a sports supplement, it's worth taking. So, number one supplement to keep in your routine, in your regimen, in your sub cabinet is creatine. The number one to toss out is fat burners. Now, fat burners, as the name implies, are supposed to expedite the rate at which you burn fat. They'll help you get leaner more quickly and there's just not a lot of evidence to show that over-the-counter fat burners help any more than your plain old calorie deficit. Most of them contain appetite-suppressing herbs, which may be beneficial at helping you maintain your calorie deficit, but when you're looking to purchase a fat burner,

don't think it's going to expedite fat burning. All it's really going to do is potentially help manage your appetite. If you have all the money in the world, it may be beneficial to supplement with something that suppresses appetite. But if your goal is fat loss, I would not even put fat burners in my top five. If you want compounds that can naturally help with body fat oxidation, you needn't look any further than plain old caffeine, which you can get from black coffee or the majority of pre-workout products on the market, caffeine has been shown to help with fat mobilization as well as body fat oxidation. So these are good things.

Are they going to make massively impactful, huge marginal differences? Probably not, but it's going to certainly be a more affordable mechanism than taking a bunch of fat burners. more affordable mechanism than taking a bunch of fat burners. So the number one supplement you need to toss or never buy again is fat burners. Moving on to the number two supplement you have to have in your routine is a quality protein powder. Now I won't proselytize you as to whether that has to be plant or animal, but I want to talk to you about a protein powder from a functional perspective. So for most lifters, we're looking to get anywhere from 0.7 to 1 grams of protein per pound of body weight. And even for general health purposes, just health and fitness enthusiasts and people who want to live a lean, fit, and active lifestyle, having a higher protein intake certainly seems to help. Higher protein diets have been associated with higher lean body mass and lower body fat percentages, increased satiety, and generally

better dietary adherence. That being said, not everybody's a fan of dairy, but there are a tremendous number of products available on the market now to increase protein intake from plant based proteins. If you get a plant-based protein, you want a blend of probably rice and pea. Collagen proteins, which can help with certain things, and they tend to be easier to tolerate, albeit not the best for muscle growth. And of course, my personal favorite, whey protein, which is just, again, essentially powdered milk, the likes of which now come in grass-fed varieties, which makes them a lot more palatable for health enthusiasts out there. And I found that whey protein tends to be very easy to stomach for

most people who do not have a dairy intolerance. Now, additionally, when we talk about whey protein, it's quite high in the amino acid leucine. Leucine is the amino acid which flips on the mTOR switch. mTOR is the, simply put, it's a pathway in the body that potentiates muscle growth. So when mTOR is on, you are building muscle for the most part. And mTOR is flipped on by a few things, most of which are protein intake and leucine and resistance training. So having a quality protein supplement around can help ensure that we keep mTOR on if we're too far between whole foods protein feedings and also help us maintain lean body mass sorry by ensuring we're getting adequate protein intake

throughout the day so any type of protein will do although i am a much bigger fan of whey protein and rice pea blends than i am collagen but any dietary protein is certainly going to outweigh a deficiency so number two supplement you have to have and pair it with creatine is protein powder. Now, the number two one you can toss in the garbage right alongside fat burners is over-the-counter testosterone boosters. Now, testosterone is a massively important compound when it comes to building muscle tissue, and it certainly makes a difference in both men and women. And it's no secret that steroids and testosterone derivatives are incredibly effective at packing on muscle very, very quickly. And this is why the supplement industry created over-the-counter testosterone boosters. They're what I call implied steroids. When you boost

testosterone, there's an implication that you're going to get steroid-like results, and this has just not been the case in the research. D-aspartic acid is a popular over-the-counter testosterone booster that has been shown to boost testosterone a little bit, but it's going to drop back down to normal after a few weeks. Another popular one is tribulus, which has more been tied to increasing libido than it has increasing testosterone. So many of these products have herbs that have been shown to increase libido, and that can create what we would call a placebo effect where you're drawing correlation between your increased libido and your increased in what you would believe to be a perceived increase in testosterone. Simply put, you want

to have sex more often. If you're somebody who wasn't quite as virile or quite as, you know, ready to go, if you will, you might interpret that as an increase in testosterone, and perhaps that's going to be a placebo effect that you draw from there. Now, that does not make these supplements worth it in any way, shape, or form. It doesn't make them complete garbage, but from a functional standpoint and a health standpoint, there are better ways to increase your libido, including getting better sleep, being more hydrated and increasing your intake of plant matter. Not that plant matter increases your likelihood of having more sex or anything like that, but the nitrates and things found in plants can actually increase blood flow. And men, I needn't say anything more than that. So that's kind of the mechanism by which increasing your plant and plant matter intake can help with libido and enhancing your sexual performance.

But no need to take over-the-counter testosterone boosters. So one you should take, and this is number three on the list right next to creatine and protein, is fish oil. Fish oil is particularly high in omega-3 fatty acids, EPA and DHA being two of those acids. Now, what makes omega-3s so impactful on health is our omega ratios in the traditional Western diet are pretty out of whack. We have omegas 3, 6, and 9 primarily, and the omega 3 to 6 ratio needs to be kept in check. Particularly in the traditional western diet, we tend to see it skewed more in favor of omega 6s, which are often some of the fats we use in fast food and typical American cooking. And when that omega 3 and omega 6 ratio gets out of whack, things can get a little ugly

in the body. But supplementing with fish oil has been shown to improve heart health, brain health, cognitive performance, joint health, inflammation, all of that stuff via simply balancing these omega-3 to 6 ratios in the body. It's quite affordable from a supplement standpoint, although it's very, very important that you get quality sourced omega-3 that is not rancid. Something I've actually found out recently that I found to be quite fascinating is you can freeze your fish oil. That's right, you can freeze it. I have not tried this, although freezing it would certainly improve the shelf life. And if you're not ballsy enough to stick it in the freezer, you can certainly refrigerate it. Now, making sure that this fish oil you don't get is rancid is quite important. So many companies will use lemon or

orange oil inside of fish oil to increase the shelf life by making you kind of unable to taste or smell rancid fish oil. If you can find unflavored fish oil, simply poking a hole in the cap can make it quite easy to determine whether or not the fish oil is rancid. You're not looking, of course, for a very fishy smell. You want it to smell kind of bland. Other things to be on the lookout for when shopping for a fish oil are the actual amounts of omega-3, EPA, and DHA in the product. So keep an eye out for that. A lot of them have thick coatings to prevent burping, but thickening the coating actually limits the amount of obviously fish oil inside the capsule. So be careful with that. An easy way to avoid burping up your fish oil is to simply take it with a meal, drink it with plenty of water as well.

But again, for the most part, this is a very well-studied supplement. One thing worth noting, it does seem medication whatsoever that affects your blood pressure or your blood, you should check with your doctor about taking fish oil. And I'll use this as the caveat to say that you should check with your doctor before you take anything that I do seriously. Before you take any supplement I recommend, you should even check with your doctor before you watch the third season or seventh season of Star Wars The Clone Wars. Now, another one to add to your list of supplements to never buy again and toss, this is number three, are branch-chained amino acids or as they're colloquially known as in the fitness space, BCAAs. Of course, the BCAAs are the three amino acids, leucine, isoleucine, and valine. Remember, leucine is important. We talked about it earlier when we talked about

protein as it helps turn on mTOR, that switch that helps us build muscle. And isoleucine and valine seem to help with amino acid uptake, particularly leucine. But BCAAs do not stack up well at all in the research. In protein-equated diets, those would be diets where individuals ate enough protein, almost every study shows BCAAs are essentially useless. Their only real utility is for those who are on a completely plant-based diet where leucine, isoleucine, and valine might be harder to come by because, of course, those are most readily found in animal proteins, and it's no accident that people who eat animal proteins tend to be more muscular than those who do not, and that's probably the mechanism behind it. But in protein-equated diets where almost all

the amino acids are available and available in readily enough amounts for the body to do what it needs, BCAAs don't stack up well and they kind of just become useless. Another interesting thing is BCAAs do have calories, even though they're marketed as being calorie-free. So many competitors who take BCAAs well into their prep, or this would be of course prep for a bodybuilding show, they're adding unnecessarily high amounts of calories by taking two, three, four scoops of BCAAs a day to supplement their already very high protein diet. So I don't recommend BCAAs for basically anybody but people who are on a plant-based diet. And even if you were, I would still recommend an essential amino acid supplement instead.

That is an EAA, which is all of the amino acids that we need, the essential amino acids that we need. Those are the amino acids we can only get from diet, the essential ones. Or just a simple plant-based protein. While we are talking about vegans, of all of the things on this list that I think are most important, it would be the three I recommended this up until this point. Creatine would be incredibly beneficial for vegans because we can only get it from animal products. A protein supplement of some type, be that a pea rice blend or an essential amino acid complex, and a omega-3 supplement. Now, fish oil, of course, is not vegan, but there are algae-based forms of omega-3 supplements. It seems to be that marine forms of omega-3, that would be those that

come from the ocean, are a little bit more beneficial than not. So, toss BCAAs and add number four from our list to your cabinet, the multivitamin. Now, multivitamins are a must-take, in my opinion, for anybody with an active lifestyle, not because they do anything special, fantastic, or amazing, but because they're affordable, they cover your bases, and they make sure that you don't walk around with any glaring nutrient deficiencies that could be easily remedied

by simply taking a quality multivitamin supplement. Now, if you eat a fantastic diet and you eat a variety of fruits and vegetables that are different colors and are in season, and you eat a lot of healthy animal meats and animal products and grains and all that stuff, and you're really balanced, then by all means, you probably don't need one. But if you're a typical on-the-go American or anywhere in the world, for that matter, it definitely pays credence to have something like a multivitamin lying around. These are things that can really make

a difference in regards to performance, longevity, as well as immune boosting stuff that'll just keep you training, keep you focused on your fitness, and keep you from any of the kind of avoidable pitfalls that stem from nutrient deficiencies. If we could simply take a couple pills here and there to just make sure we have our bases covered and it's affordable, I think that multivitamins have a place in your routine. Now, of all the supplements on this list, they're probably going to make the least noticeable difference, but they're one you can take basically daily that have almost no deleterious effects. You just need to watch out for vitamin toxicity of certain vitamins. Now, the next one from our list, this is another one that you can toss,

and this is probably the one that is the most agitating to me, is the weight gainer supplements. These are just big, huge tubs of protein loaded full of maltodextrin and cheap crap, usually cornstarch solids and cheap forms of fat so that young kids who have a complex about being too small can put on weight. And I actually have some funny stories about this because back in the day, I was smaller than I am now, if you can believe that. But the weight gainer supplements were incredibly popular when I was playing high school sports because everybody wanted to be bigger. And when you're a kid and you move around all the time, you are often quite

small. So the nutrition shops, whether it was GNC, NutriShop, Vitamin Shop, whatever, they all sold a ton of these supplements, these weight gainer supplements. And they would sell them in buckets, literally buckets with a handle on it, the handle that pivots around the outside of the bucket, like a paint bucket. And they would have like 11 servings in this five gallon bucket of protein powder. And it was unbelievable how funny this was because like 11 servings in five gallons means you're putting down almost a half a gallon worth of this stuff. And the scoops looked like laundry detergent scoops and you would have to take four. And this stuff tasted so sweet. It was so gross. And you would just pound it back because again, you had to get 1500 calories in these shakes. It was what all your boys were doing. You were trying to put on some mass bro. Like that was the way to do it. The one product I remember, and I don't know if they still make it. Matter of fact, I almost want to just look it up right now.

It was called Up Your Mass. And I'll never forget that name because obviously it's a play on the term up your ass. But Up Your Mass had a soy-based protein powder. And I'll never forget one of my friends took it. And he was complaining that he was going to get, he was like, man, you know, this soy-based protein powder is already making me gain weight and it's making me gain it in my tits. Like I'm getting girl tits already because soy makes you have too much estrogen. Me and my friends at the time were like, no, dude,

you're just getting fat. How much of this are you taking? And he said, oh, I'm taking two scoops a day. And we were like, oh, two scoops. He's like, well, no, two servings, which if you look at the label, which I've pulled it up now, two servings was approximately 1,610 calories. So they still make up your mass, which makes me happy and sad at the same time. But look, if you're somebody looking to gain muscle, I would recommend strongly making your own weight gainer shake. And you can almost knock out a couple of these supplements off your list simply by doing what i say right now which would be grab a blender fill it with a high quality protein powder whether it be plant-based or whey a variety of different fruits you might even add something like spinach to increase the micronutrient intake you can add things like avocado oatmeal there's easy carbs to add to it to increase the uh or vary the different types of

sugars you're getting in case you don't want to get a lot of fructose you can add things like honey which has a nice blend to it you can add like i said earlier oats adding mostly whole foods to the blender with a quality whey protein shake is going to provide you exponentially more nutrition at a much more actually affordable price. These mass gainer shakes are extremely expensive and you can toss your creatine right in there with it. And the increased intake of multivitamins from the plant-based sources, not multivitamins, just vitamins of different sources. You're getting plant compounds from the different fruits, just vitamins of different sources. You're getting plant compounds from the different fruits,

all good in the hood with simply making your own. And it's probably going to taste better too. Now, one you might consider tossing. Now we're getting kind of outside of the big names here, but this is one you've probably heard of is glutamine. Now, glutamine is the most abundant amino acid in the body. Of everything we make, from an amino acid standpoint, we make the most glutamine. So, supplementing with it, for most people, doesn't make a lot of sense. There does seem to be rationale behind taking it for improving the health of your gut, but that would only really be something I would recommend for people who have acute or struggle with acute gut issues or struggle with gut issues. But taking glutamine goes right up there for me with BCAAs, and it doesn't seem like something that anybody who's getting enough protein would need to do. Now, the last one I would recommend you buy

is a greens powder. I went out of order there, but that's okay. I'll recap and it'll all make sense. Now, a greens powder is fantastic for those of us who have a hard time getting enough vegetables in our diet, which can be difficult, especially if you have an active lifestyle, you're on the go, it's hard to get fresh fruits and veggies. So having a supplemental green powder, which are essentially just freeze dried powdered vegetables around, can ensure that you're getting quality micronutrients, plant compounds, and polyphenols that we only really get from plants. Now, what you're going to miss out on here is probably that fiber. We need to get fiber in the diet. It's very vital for the bacterium in our gut that live on that. So thinking that you can simply replace all of

your vegetable intake with a greens powder is a little bit silly, but having one around for the days that you don't get enough vegetables in might help cover your bases in the same way a multivitamin might. So, guys, let's recap really briefly. Five supplements you should be taking. Number one is creatine. Number two, protein powder. You don't have to take it, but you should have it on hand. Fish oil, something you can get away with taking every day. Multi-vitamins and greens powders.

The big five that you want to avoid because for most people, they tend to be a waste of money. And again, these aren't the five worst. These aren't the five most dangerous. These are just the five I find most people don't need to spend their money on. Number one, fat burners. Number two, test boosters. Number three, BCAAs. Number four, weight gainer shakes. And number five, glutamine. So staying away from those and spending your money on hopefully more whole foods or just increasing the quality of the supplements you're already taking will be money well spent for most people. So, guys, there you have it.

If you want to learn more about supplements, like I told you earlier, go to my website, www.coachdanymetrenga.com, and click the free resources tab. I've got a ton of valuable free guides there, including one on supplements where I go even more in depth on some of the stuff we talked about. So that'll make a great supplement, no pun intended, to the things we talked about today. And like I mentioned before, there's more free guides as well as blogs. You'll also find the link to my programs and coaching articles. Speaking of programs, as a thank you for you guys tuning in, being a subscriber,

and just generally supporting my content, I want to support you, so we are doing a giveaway. I'm extending the giveaway from the inaugural episode, and I'm going to pick two winners from today's episode who leave a five-star review, share this podcast on Instagram and tag me in it. If you don't tag me, I can't see it. Simply take a screenshot of it on your phone or whatever you're listening to. Put it on your story. Tag me. Let me know what you thought.

I will be picking two winners and sending you either of the programs I've written. And I hope you guys have enjoyed this episode. Again, thank you so much for listening to the Dynamic Dialogues podcast. More coming your way very shortly. And of course, I would be remiss if I didn't remind you that despite today's episode being all about supplements, the best thing you can do for your health is get a quality night's sleep, do some combination of resistance training and cardiovascular exercise. Eat a mostly whole foods diet. Minimize stress. Be with people who make you happy.

Do things that make you happy. Minimize your stress. And again, if you're in a mental health crisis, talk to someone about it. All that stuff is going to help you live a way healthier life than any supplement you'll ever buy. Have an awesome day. Thanks so much for listening. Good luck.