Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 276: 8 tactics for growing stubborn muscle groups + my cold water immersion protocol

Episode Date: April 4, 2023

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome, everybody, to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. As always, I'm your host, Danny Matrenga. And in this episode, we will be discussing caffeine supplementation, my 20-day caffeine hiatus, how that's going, the utilization of cold water immersion and sauna protocols that I like that don't interfere with muscle growth, but may allow for improvements in both cognition, alertness, as well as longevity. And I will be discussing eight tactics for growing stubborn muscle groups, muscle groups that just don't seem to develop for you at the pace and with the same, let's call it linearity that you get out of other muscles and how you can deduce which muscles may or may not be genetically working in your favor, how to work
Starting point is 00:00:50 through that work around it with eight tips. So sit back and enjoy the episode, folks. Can't wait to get into it. This episode is brought to you in part thanks to some of our amazing partners like LMNT. LMNT makes the best electrolyte product on the market. In fact, I've actually started drinking my LMNT each and every morning before I have coffee so as to optimize my circadian biology, make sure that I'm hydrated, and make sure that I'm getting ahead on my water intake throughout the day and not reliant on stimulants, but instead being somebody who's reliant on hydration and the proper balance of minerals and electrolytes. If you want to feel your best all day, mentally and
Starting point is 00:01:32 physically, it's imperative that you stay hydrated. LMNT provides a balanced ratio of sodium, potassium, and magnesium to support brain and body hydration. This combination of electrolytes improves health, performance, body and brain performance, mind you, helps to reduce cramps and soreness and gets you more hydrated. There's no sugar. Elementia is sweetened with stevia. It's perfect for exercise and perfect for the sauna because the flavors are natural, tasty, delicious, and not overpowering. And if you're like me, you'll use them multiple times a day across your training sessions to get hydrated early, to replenish after sauna use. And again, it's not just me. LMNT is the official sports drink
Starting point is 00:02:15 of Team USA Weightlifting, and it's used by athletes in the NBA, NFL, Major League Baseball, as well as athletes like you and I looking to take your fitness to the next level. My favorite flavors are definitely the raspberry and citrus. When I put a box together, I try to load up on raspberry and citrus. And when you put your box together, you can get a free sample pack containing all of Element's amazing flavors like mango chili, citrus, raspberry, orange, and more. To get access to this free gift with purchase, scroll down to the show notes and check out using the special link for Dynamic Dialogue listeners. Okay, folks. So I want to start the episode by updating you on my 21st day
Starting point is 00:02:59 sans caffeine. I started this almost exactly three weeks out from the end of the month of April because I wanted to give myself at least two to three weeks time to really cut caffeine out of my system, see how I felt, see how I operated. Now, when I utilize caffeine, I am typically utilizing it for an increase in energy, increase in alertness, and an increase in physical work output. I've used caffeine for over a decade consistently, at least five days a week, most oftentimes seven days a week during that 10-year period. This was mostly in the form of energy drinks and pre-workout.
Starting point is 00:03:39 This was something that I started doing when I was a little bit on the younger side, if I'm being honest. was something that I started doing when I was a little bit on the younger side, if I'm being honest. So much of what I tell you and the advice I give you guys on this podcast doesn't just come from 10 years of personal training and working with real people just like you. It also comes from my own growth in the fitness industry and as a lifter and as a fitness enthusiast. I learn a lot from the things that I've spent money on that didn't work, invested time into that didn't pan out. And I want to share those with you. And taking way too much caffeine in pre-workout is something that I've spent a good amount of time doing. And while
Starting point is 00:04:17 there are certainly ingredients in many common energy drinks and pre-workout formulas like betaine, beta alanine, L-citrulline, citicoline that can be beneficial. I had been using them so much and so long that I was actually beginning to experience what I believe to be negative effects from too long, let's call it prolonged caffeine utilization. I wasn't noticing energy, wasn't noticing alertness, wasn't noticing alertness, wasn't noticing increased cognition, but I was noticing increased irritability, decreased ability to settle myself, and increased anxiety. Now, the enhancement of those feelings and emotions did correlate pretty tightly with the installation of an espresso machine both in my home and in my studio. Once I got
Starting point is 00:05:05 those machines, I made the decision, a decision, which if I'm being honest at the time, didn't seem like a big deal to start layering in one, two, three shots of espresso daily after sometimes taking one to two scoops of pre-workout. Now, thankfully in this time, I started to shift more towards stimulant free pre-workout. Legion, our amazing sponsor, makes one that I really like. The problem that I had with this protocol was I was still using espresso shots, getting my daily caffeine intake north of 400 milligrams a day. So after a 21-day hiatus, here's what I have found. I'm definitely more calm. I am definitely more peaceful. I definitely don't elevate as quickly to let's call these states of irritability
Starting point is 00:05:54 or anxiety. It takes me longer to get there. I'm more present. I am more slow. And I'd say the number one change is I feel less rushed and less racy. I'm still getting great pumps switching from pulse, which is a caffeinated formula pre-workout that I like to the stimulant free version, a hundred percent. Two scoops of that has been fabulous. I don't know when and if I will reintroduce caffeine. I am noticing a big benefit. I do miss the taste of coffee and I do enjoy sipping occasionally on some herbal teas. These don't contain caffeine, but I'm going to roll with this for the foreseeable future, at least 30 days, because I do have a film shooting coming up and
Starting point is 00:06:38 I'd like to do a 30 day rundown on caffeine as well as a six month rundown on caffeine, as well as a six-month rundown on cold water immersion and a 60-day update on cold and hot therapy that I've been doing. I want to, again, before we dive too deep into these training protocols, talk about cold water immersion as a recovery protocol and share with you the recovery and what I would call prep protocol I've been doing now for almost 60 days. So I've been messing with the ice barrel and cold water immersion as an athlete much longer than this. I'm a big fan, but I also would like to build muscle. So the cold water immersion therapy that you get when you submerge the body under cold water, right? Cold water immersion means dunking the body of underwater up to the neck. That's important. Cold showers don't immerse the body in its totality.
Starting point is 00:07:32 So you don't get the same shunting effect. You don't get the same enhanced constriction of the blood vessels. You don't get as a rushed a response because the cold is not surrounding the body. It is hitting one side of the body. Now, this can be a pretty substantially arousing event. So when we talk in a second about using cold water immersion to enhance alertness and cognition, this might be where cold showers kind of win. But as far as muscle repair, recovery, not feeling sore, cryotherapy can't even touch cold water immersion. So I have an ice barrel. It's beautiful. It's in the backyard. It makes me do this more. And I wanted to use it on a regular basis without exposing myself to a
Starting point is 00:08:18 reduction in muscularity or a reduction in the pace at which I built muscle. Voice got a little raspy there. Too bad it doesn't sound like that all the time. So what I did was I looked through as much of the literature as I could find specific to the duration of the ice bath or cold water immersion that you do as it pertains to muscle growth. And what I have found is that shorter duration cold water immersion can elicit a lot of the same benefit for recovery without chipping away at your precious gains in strength and muscle the way long sessions might. Additionally, long sessions tend to be pretty tough, both psychologically and physically. It's not easy. That's why I think most people want little to nothing to do with cold water immersion, but you are missing out. So the protocol I've done, and this is in conjunction
Starting point is 00:09:11 with five days a week of regular resistance training, eating in a calorie surplus, and focusing specifically on the development of my back and my biceps. Those were two muscle groups that I wanted to develop. I did three, two to three minute ice bath slash cold water immersion sessions per week on the days I did not train. And I made sure that these were four to six hours removed. I used an ice barrel for the cold water immersion because out of all of the things I've used, whether it be a more horizontal cold plunge, a cold shower, a walk-in plunge, I like the verticality of the ice barrel. There is no opportunity to wimp out. You hover over the barrel and you drop in. The reduction in cognitive bandwidth required to get in there makes a huge difference for me. Cognitive bandwidth required to get in there makes a huge difference for me. So when I spread those out, I noticed still over a 60 day timeframe, an increase on the
Starting point is 00:10:11 scale of about five pounds. So I gained about five pounds in this 60 day timeframe going from 184 to 189 pounds. My back appears to be more dense. It appears to have greater width and my arms do appear to have grown using measurements. I could say exactly how much they've grown, but measurements aren't the best. And I would say that a quarter inch on each arm, isn't something that to you guys would sound super significant, but to me, a quarter inch on each arm over a 60-day timeframe feels like an awful lot. Now, I was doing a lot of volume for the triceps too, so it's almost impossible to
Starting point is 00:10:52 parse out, but I will say from a purely visual standpoint, the way my back has changed in this 60-day specialization block that had crossover with cold water immersion, I have no reason to believe that short ice baths or cold water immersion sessions of one to three minutes done two to three times a week will do anything but enhance your gains. Interestingly enough as well, and this will be a nice segue into discussing the eight things you can do to develop muscle tissue. I found that the mental toughness that I was able to cultivate, and I know that it's very, very fun to poke holes in this idea that doing ice baths makes you hardcore. Because the truth is, life is much more difficult than any ice bath. And there are things that will probably come up in your life that you won't be prepared for, no matter how many
Starting point is 00:11:43 cold sessions you do. So the idea that doing them turns you into a superhero isn't something I want to play into too much because I have the luxury of being able to do this and I choose to do this and I'm happy to do it. I don't think it makes me better or tougher than anybody, but it has increased my tolerance for physical discomfort and I'm finding that I'm much more confident and capable of training close to failure. And that to me was a really exciting finding and a really, really cool thing that I wasn't expecting. So if you're into taking advantage of cold water immersion the same way that I have,
Starting point is 00:12:21 and you want to see how well it's going to work for you, which I bet it will, go over to our awesome sponsors, icebarrel.com slash Danny. Check out using the code Danny, save a big chunk of change and start adding cold water immersion into your life to improve your recovery, your cognition, and your alertness. The last thing to touch on here before we get into what you can do to optimize growth in what could be lagging or weak muscle groups is discussing how I pair and contrast now that I have the sauna. locally. And it's good. It's about 160 to 200 degrees, depending on how many people are in there opening the door. It gets way up there. And I genuinely do trust the thermometer because it's not mounted all the way up in the top corner. It's actually right in the middle of the wall. And it is considerably hotter than the average gym keeps their sauna, which I really like. considerably hotter than the average gym keeps their sauna, which I really like.
Starting point is 00:13:30 And now that I have one at home, I'm in the unique position of being able to do cold and contrasting sessions. So, uh, I can contrast, which I might do more of on my non training days where I do five minutes in the sauna at 200 or one minute in the cold plunge, five minutes in the sauna at 200, one minute in the cold plunge, five minutes in the sauna, one in the plunge, five in the sauna, one in the plunge to net a cumulative three minutes on non-training days. I think this will help with recovery, cognition, peace of mind. These are things that I've noticed doing these temperature modulating therapies for years and decrease in stress and increase in alert, an increase in what I would call cognitive availability. I'm just more present. But on my training days, I'd love to be in a position where I can use the sauna. So the Sisu is great. Sisu is the company that I went with.
Starting point is 00:14:16 I'm super excited to be partnering with them. We don't have a formal partnership for the podcast because there's simply no way you can get a tremendous amount of savings on a product that is made completely out of wood. It's the highest quality Amish cut in America, cedar that you are going to find in the shape of a barrel. So this is a handcrafted sauna that I put together myself with my client, Ted, who'd built a sauna before. So we just had an absolute blast of a time. And being able to use that post-workout is going to be unbelievable. I initially used to stay away from all things cold water and all things hot temperature. I should
Starting point is 00:14:57 say all things hot and cold post-workout because I believed that the anti-inflammatory effect was going to be too strong and could minimize my gains. But Dr. Mike T. Nelson and a fortuitous lift with Mike Matthews, the CEO of Legion, that ended in a sauna session really got me thinking that it doesn't seem to me to be too big of a deal to do sauna post-workout because it might actually increase blood flow to the tissue. So I will be moving forward now, completing what I would describe another new experiment, which is going to be two months or about 40 workouts worth of post-workout sauna. And I will let you know how this goes, and I will do some type of contrast protocol on my non-training days. So enough of an update on these biohacking experiments I've been running. And again, I don't want to be
Starting point is 00:15:52 categorized as somebody who is a quote unquote biohacker, but I am interested in performing end of one experiments. And I've performed a number of them in the gym, both with myself and with clients as it pertains to developing stubborn muscle groups, which seems to be a question that pops up each and every week, which is how do I grow my stubborn X, Y, Z? So truth is guys, the muscle groups that we have that develop easily are often muscle groups that we have a genetic propensity for being able to load well, or we just might have a genetic propensity for those muscles to develop more quickly. I'll use a short person as an example to describe a proclivity that might not be
Starting point is 00:16:38 directly genetic, but it might be anthropometric. Meaning, if you are shorter, it's very likely that you had parents who are shorter. If those parents also had equivalent ankle mobility and hip mobility, good core strength, and were slightly squatty, you might then be slightly squatty yourself and be able to do things like squats, lunges, leg presses, and hack squats with better efficiency than somebody who genetically was more predisposed to height and long femur length. And that mechanical advantage that one gets genetically might lead to better gains in certain muscles and worse in others. So there's mechanical and anthropometric things to consider. What's going on guys? Taking a break from this episode to tell you a little bit about my coaching company, Core Coaching Method.
Starting point is 00:17:26 More specifically, our app-based training. We partnered with Train Heroic to bring app-based training to you using the best technology and best user interface possible. You can join either my Home Heroes team, or you can train from home with bands and dumbbells, or Elite Physique, which is a female bodybuilding-focused program where you can train at the gym with equipments designed specifically to help you develop strength as well as the glutes, hamstrings, quads, and back. I have more teams coming planned for a variety of different fitness levels. But what's cool about this is when you join these programs, you get programming that's updated every single week, the sets to do, the reps to do,
Starting point is 00:18:02 exercise tutorials filmed by me with me and my team. So you'll get my exact coaching expertise as to how to perform the movement, whether you're training at home or you're training in the gym. And again, these teams are somewhat specific. So you'll find other members of those communities looking to pursue similar goals at similar fitness levels. You can chat, ask questions, upload form for form review, ask for substitutions. It's a really cool training community and you can try it completely free for seven days. Just click the link in the podcast description below. Can't wait to see you in the core coaching collective, my app-based training community. Back to the show. But also, I don't think there's any denying that things like glutes, arms, pecs,
Starting point is 00:18:47 lats, the ability at the genetic level for protein synthesis to occur in a localized fashion, meaning like your dad had big arms and maybe mechanically you're likely to have big arms because your training is going to bias more of the biceps than it might the anterior delt or something to that effect on certain movements. But the truth is, even if you didn't lift, you'd probably have pretty decent biceps and it just runs in the family. So both of those things are present when we talk about lagging muscle groups. And we're going to be honest and say that those are things that we cannot change.
Starting point is 00:19:23 So let's not focus too much on our anthropometry because we can't change our skeleton. And let's not focus too much on our genetic predisposition for synthesizing tissue more in some areas than others. That's not fair. That's focusing on things that while they're fun to talk about, aren't really going to help. So the first thing that you can do is you can look at your frequency in terms of how many sessions a week are you training this muscle. And I would say for most people who want to either do a specialization block or they want to bring up a lagging muscle group, you'll be better off if you train it two to three times a week, maybe even more than you will if you
Starting point is 00:20:05 train it one time a week. The reason for this has to do with the ability to split meaningful volume across multiple sessions, avoid junk volume, really lean into the power of effective sets and effective reps that are taken close to failure with a really good amount of intensity and effort. that are taken close to failure with a really good amount of intensity and effort. And if you try to do all of the sets in one workout, you might lose some steam and you also will only elevate muscle protein synthesis in that area to that degree and that magnitude on that one session. So the first thing you should do, if you have a muscle group that you'd like to develop, put together some type of specialization block and focus on the frequency at which you hit that muscle and elevate it to two to three times per week. The second tip I have for you is make sure that you're doing at least 10 sets, probably 20
Starting point is 00:20:56 sets. And if that's not working, you can go as high as 30 sets. I have seen many people for many years say 10 to 12 sets is all you need to grow muscle as long as they're hard sets. And I believe that's true for most people and most novices and most muscle groups. But for advanced trainees who have a muscle group that might be stubborn, it's not a bad idea to push that number all the way up to 20. And after reading some material from Greg Knuckles and the guys over at Stronger by Science, I'm of the belief that you could push it even higher than that. So the second thing you should do and you should look to implement when looking to grow a stubborn muscle group is a set volume threshold of 10, 20, or 30, depending on the rest
Starting point is 00:21:39 of your training. So if you're super new to training and you only do 10 sets a workout, training. So if you're super new to training and you only do 10 sets a workout, doing 10 sets a week for one muscle group might be a lot of volume. If you're an intermediate lifter who lifts two times a week, doing 15 to 20 sets for a given muscle group might also be a lot. But if you're a super advanced lifter who's lifting six to seven days a week and your volume's already quite high, you can push it even further. But the truth is, having more meaningful volume that is performed and executed properly in the gym with a specific proximity to failure, right? It's got to be close to failure, whether it's a high rep set that's going to make you fail because it's burning, or it's a low rep set that's
Starting point is 00:22:21 biasing these mechanical tension pathways for muscle growth, and it's the sheer load that's making you reach that kind of failure point, that's less important. What's most important is the signal, the amplitude of the set is high enough that it's actually going to substantiate growth. Okay. Which brings me to my third point, a tactic that works very well for helping people who have either plateaued in their development of a specific muscle group or genetically they struggle with the development of a specific muscle group is to incorporate failure training or even beyond failure training slash what many people would call assisted reps. what many people would call assisted reps. So this means selecting exercises for that muscle group that are safe to take to failure and perhaps beyond. We'll use the back as an exercise because
Starting point is 00:23:14 we discussed my back earlier. So a back exercise that I can take to complete failure is a chin-up. I could do sets of chin-ups to failure. Now, I could also do something like a lat pull-down, where I take it all the way to failure, where I cannot pull it down any further, but I have a partner who allows me to train beyond failure, where I actually get them to pull the weight down and handle the concentric, where you're more likely to fail, and then I fatigue the muscle even more eccentrically as it lengthens, which might let us take advantage of some of the lengthened and enhanced hypertrophic impact of lengthened position training. I've actually got Brian Boorstein coming on the
Starting point is 00:23:58 podcast next week to discuss specifically what it means to train something in its shortened position and its lengthened position. Are there benefits to lengthened work? What are the benefits of shortened work? I really want to break this down for you guys so that you understand mechanically strength training in all of its complexities, but without so much of the jargon and distraction that keeps you from getting real results. But the truth is you need to do some of the work in the contracted shortened position where you get the best pumps. You need to do some work in the lengthened position where you get those big stretches and the muscle is stretched
Starting point is 00:24:33 and working hard in that stretch position. That might be better for hypertrophy. And because of that, it makes sense to occasionally do some beyond failure training where you're having somebody else handle the concentric where you are weaker, and then you allow the muscle to continue working beyond failure on the eccentric portion. Okay. The fourth protocol that I like, and this is specifically for joints that perform flexion and extension. And I'd go so far as to say it's exclusively for joints that perform flexion and extension, because I just have not seen many people have a whole lot of luck, quite frankly, when it comes to using these tools for developing other muscle groups. So I'm talking about blood flow restriction training,
Starting point is 00:25:20 Katsu training, occlusion training. It goes by many names. Succinctly, BFR, blood flow restriction. Blood flow restriction essentially works by creating a tourniquet effect at a joint. So, if you were going to do the biceps and triceps, you're wanting to occlude blood from the elbow. So, you occlude blood at the above joint, meaning the shoulder. So you put a cuff around the shoulder and perform high volume flexion and extension. You do the same thing for the quads and the hamstrings by cuffing above them at the hip. You do the same things for the calves and the tibialis by cuffing above them at the knee, right? They work the ankles, so you cuff the knee. That's how I typically would use BFR. I've seen the best effect
Starting point is 00:26:06 with calves and tibs, gastrocnemius, calves, tibialis, right? Quads and hamstrings, biceps and triceps. Now, this is going to use the pathway of metabolic stress. It's going to help you train close to failure with very lightweight. It can be effective at rehabilitation. Now you can develop a high amount of metabolite accumulation, which could be dangerous. So you should do tons of research and be very intelligent before you deploy a BFR protocol. But I have had great luck with BFR in creating a volumizing effect at the tissue, enhancing my mind muscle connection, training closer to failure, being able to sneak in extra volume that's not as punishing on the joints, and to take advantage of that metabolic pathway
Starting point is 00:26:56 that can help with hypertrophy. So I really like blood flow restriction. I think it's a great tool. And if you're somebody who's like, eh, for me, it's biceps or triceps or quads or hands or calves or tibialis, this might be one that moves higher up your list. Not that these were in order to begin with, just in terms of what you may or may not try first. The fifth thing that I like to do, and this is a type of training that is beyond failure essentially, is the rest pause set. And so the rest pause set is let's say anywhere from six to 12 hard reps performed at a given weight,
Starting point is 00:27:32 followed by a pause when you're maybe one rep from failure of 10 to 12 seconds. And then after that 10 to 12 second pause, you try to sneak out a few more reps with that given weight, and maybe you get two to three, but instead of reaching failure at say seven or eight, you stop at six and then you take a 12 second break. You get four more, three more, you stop at nine or 10. And the rest pause is a great way to take a set that's already effective, make it even more effective and really localize the tension and the trauma that you're placing on the tissue, putting it right where you want to put it on the tissue. Okay. The sixth thing that you can do is include drop sets, which are better for training
Starting point is 00:28:22 beyond failure and accumulating volume when you don't have a training partner. It works really well for exercises that are loaded with pins. So these are selectorized or machine movements, where you simply pull a pin out and move it down. Works really well with dumbbells working out of a rack, but the drop set is essentially training close to failure with a given weight, dropping the weight 25 to 35% less say, and then training all the way to failure or getting close to that same precipice and dropping it once more. You do double drop sets. You can do triple drop sets. I've never actually seen anybody take big advantage of the quadruple drop set. Wouldn't say I'd put that towards the top of my list.
Starting point is 00:29:09 Okay, my seventh tip, this is one that I really like a lot. I think it works really well for women, especially people who have a tendency to struggle with getting enough fuel in to potentiate lots and lots of muscle growth and recovery. And that is stacking your highest calorie days on the days before and after you train these muscle groups. So if you train them four times a week, you'd eat high every day. But if you train them two to three times a week, that's going to be somewhere between four to six days where we're mindful of our nutrition. If we're doing before and after. Now, or I shouldn't say before and after, if I should say we're elevating calories on those days before and after. If you
Starting point is 00:29:50 want to take the easy approach, just elevate your calories on the day you train that muscle, so you have more fuel to start the recovery process earlier. And typically what you're going to be doing is increasing the carbohydrate availability before and after the session. So you have more fuel to go in there and kick some butt and more fuel after the fact to go in and recover, to decrease the breakdown of protein and muscle. I find that this works really, really well. And it pairs well with my eighth tip, which is taking the day before you train that muscle group off. So if you're like, yo, I want to grow my legs. I want to grow my back. I want to grow my chest. Try to find a way to position a rest day or an active rest day before that. So your
Starting point is 00:30:40 nervous system is as good and as ready to go. So here are the eight. I have a ninth one. I think it's probably the most valuable and most effective, but here are the eight. We want to have a set per week threshold somewhere between probably 10 and 30. We want to have a frequency somewhere between two to three times a week. We want to experiment with training to failure beyond failure. We want to utilize pathways that let us take advantage of mechanical stress like rest pause or metabolic stress like BFR and drop sets, which are somewhere in between. We want to play with our calories surrounding that. We also want to play with our designed rest periods and the designed off days in our training to optimize our ability to recover
Starting point is 00:31:27 from those sessions that are supposed to be focused on the muscles that are in the worst position to grow for you. The final tip I have before we sign off, guys, is getting a coach or getting a training partner in person or online to review your form, audit your intensity, find a way to make sure that you're truly working hard enough. If you have a muscle that's not growing, oftentimes it's because it's one that you don't train with any degree of priority or intensity. It's simply thrown on to the back of your workout because you don't like it in the first place. And having a training partner or coach who pushes you and holds you accountable will prevent you from making this all too common mistake. So there you have it, guys. That was this episode. I hope you learned something. I hope you enjoyed it. I implore you to share it. Please tag me on your Instagram story.
Starting point is 00:32:16 Please make sure that you submit a five-star rating and review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. These kinds of things help this podcast grow, and it's never grown faster than it's grown in the last six months. I'm super stoked to continue to bring you more and more in the coming weeks from this show and I can't wait to connect with you. So be sure to share, leave a review, connect with me and I will catch you on the next one. you

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