Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 3 - Q&A, The Arnold Classic, Bands vs. Cables, Gaining Muscle + More!

Episode Date: March 11, 2020

Danny answers questions on bands, cables, bulking, calorie intake and more! 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.

Welcome back guys to what is now the third episode of the Dynamic Dialogues podcast. Today we are diving into another Q&A. Now again, this one's from Instagram. We've got seven to eight questions that we'll get through today. So before we do that, let's talk a little bit about the Arnold Classic. Yes, the Arnold Classic is that massive expo in Columbus, Ohio that was canceled due to the coronavirus. It's essentially the eastern United States version of the Mr. Olympia. And the expo is even bigger. Now, I've never been, but I've been to the Olympia many times, and I know several people who have been to both.

I've heard that the Arnold is absolutely nuts. Wall to wall, crawling with people. Crazy. So that was canceled due to coronavirus concerns. However, the competition did happen and William Bonak won the men's open bodybuilding, which to me wasn't much of a surprise. I had him winning. He's probably a top five bodybuilder on the planet any way you slice it, especially now that Phil Heath isn't competing anymore. So that opens up a spot. But William has a fantastic physique, particularly being one of the shorter guys on stage. He came in dry, he came in conditioned. And when he does that, he's probably going to be the favorite to win

almost any show that doesn't feature obviously Phil Heath and Sean Roden, who aren't competing for personal or legal reasons. But Dexter Jackson, who's got to be like 100 years old now, got second. And again, no surprises there. William Bonac taking it home. William Bonak taking it home. And then I think men's physique was won by Andre Ferguson, who in my opinion has probably the best physique of that entire division. And he has for quite some time. I think the main issue with him is sometimes he doesn't come in conditioned, but as far as physique goes, he's definitely got the best physique. I think he has my favorite physique of all of them. And again, yeah, Dexter Jackson was able to get second place in this show. And I want to say that

he is in his 50s, which is just unbelievable. It's insane what this guy's physique looks like at 50 years old. Now, again, bodybuilding is very fringe and it's a strange sport that a lot of people aren't very interested in. I do, however, have a little bit of an affinity for it. So I figured we would recap the two primary divisions at the Arnold Classic, which would of course now be men's physique and men's open bodybuilding, but I'm not a huge fan of bikini, so I don't talk too much about that. Spring training is well underway in baseball, so that is coming to a kind of fever pitch now. And there wasn't really many exciting things that happened over the weekend in the NBA. So we'll just get right into the questions. Our first question of the day comes from Fitrition underscore PD.

He asks, can resistance bands be just as efficient as cables in regards to muscle building? Let's talk about cables versus free weights or resistance bands versus free weights as a means of building tissue. So let's talk about cables first. Cables are generally regarded as one of the better muscle building tools we have because they have a very consistent resistance profile. Meaning, whereas dumbbells and bands typically have a variable resistance profile where something might be heavier at the bottom or heavier at the top, in general, cables seem to have a more consistent resistance profile because of the various pulley mechanisms acting upon them. It can really make a weight feel consistent throughout the entire range of motion.

The best way to describe this would actually be to compare one free weight movement to a very similar cable movement. And I found in general, the best one for this is the dumbbell fly versus the standard cable fly. So again, cable fly, cable crossover, and to a lesser extent, even the pec deck, because that does work on a cable mechanism. So consider a dumbbell fly that's very difficult in the lengthened position or at the bottom when the arms are all the way stretched out and your pec is fully stretched. That's where the majority of the weight is. You will find that that movement is extremely difficult through the first one-third of the range of motion. And as the arms come closer to the top

and the hands come closer together, the resistance profile really drops off as we get stronger and we have almost no resistance on the pec at the top of the movement when the dumbbells come together. Whereas when we do cables, particularly for this example, we'll talk about like a standing cable fly or cable crossover, there's certainly a hard part of the movement at the bottom where the pec is fully stretched. And in the lengthened position, it's quite difficult. But as we bring the cables together, unlike a dumbbell fly where we have a really pronounced

resistance drop-off, it seems to match much more closely with the resistance profile of the exercise. So meaning we have a much more consistent amount of resistance profile of the exercise. So meaning we have a much more consistent amount of resistance placed across the pec from start to finish than we do with the dumbbell. Now, bands wise, let's use this same exercise for an example. If we're going to use resistance bands to do a cable fly mimic like exercise, what you'll notice is at the bottom you'll probably have less tension in the band but as you bring the hands together because again bands are elastic as they stretch they're going to pick up more tension because bands are variably resistant so they there are something

that has a resistance that we would classify as variable, which means it's not the same throughout the entire range of motion, whereas a cable, that's one of those primary features. So the exercise might be quite easy at the bottom, but as the hands come together, right, as we bring our hands together and we shorten our chest, the fibers come closer to the sternum, we'll actually notice that lengthening in the band puts more tension in the shortened position. So whereas the dumbbell fly really hits that lengthened position, the band fly might hit the shortened position better because of the way that that tension is broken down or the way that that resistance kind of changes across the resistance profile.

resistance kind of changes across the resistance profile. But a cable in this instance would be the most consistent load placed across the working tissue throughout the entire duration of the exercise. Now, when it comes to hypertrophy or building muscle, I do think bands have a place. However, I think that cables are a superior option if they are available to you. But if you are looking to put together a home gym, a decent set of bands can go a really long way, and they make for a fantastic, absolutely fantastic tool for traveling. So resistance bands can be an efficient muscle building tool, but they are not, in my opinion, resistance bands can be an efficient muscle building tool but they are not in my opinion nearly as effective as cables or machines with a pulley mechanism but in many ways we can actually use cables to offset a resistance profile that might be quite difficult so for example on a

preacher curl a preacher curl is of course a curl that's done with a bar or dumbbell oh with the arm over a bench that holds the arm a little bit into flexion so the the forearms a little bit in front of the body and it's really supported there by the bench that's sitting underneath it and you're usually seated the hardest part by far and if you've ever done a preacher curl you certainly know this is the bottom that end range where we're in the lengthened position. So you've lowered the bar, the dumbbell, all the way to the bottom, and now you've got to get it out of that, what we would call in this case, you've got to get it out of the hole.

You've got to escape that lengthened position, and it's quite difficult for that first six to ten inches of the movement, but as the dumbbell or barbell gets closer, the resistance profile kind of becomes easier and the biceps can really just boom, finish the movement quickly. So it's not very difficult moving from that lengthening position into the shortening position. It's hardest getting out of the lengthened position, but once we kind of turn the corner, it becomes quite easy. Well, if you were to attach a band to that barbell, you would notice that the band has very little resistance on it at the bottom where the movement is quite difficult, right? Coming out of the hole. But as the movement gets easier, the band would

express more tension on the barbell as the band gets stretched out. So it would add resistance to that top portion where it's a little bit easier, and it would create a more consistent resistance profile. So that's a way that you can use bands and free weights together to balance the resistance profile of an exercise and make it match the strength curve of a muscle. And that's a really kind of advanced training tool, but it's something you might consider playing around with. Now, question number two. G2Loria asks, training a client who has a hundred pounds to lose,

what to do? So, this is a very, very common scenario nowadays. Obesity is running rampant in the United States, and there are a lot of people with a lot of weight to lose. Now, I've only helped a handful of clients, one to two, lose over 100 pounds. It's very, very rare. I've had many clients lose 30, 40, 50 pounds, but 100 pounds is tough. And a lot of that's going to be psychological because it's a long road to tow. To lose 100 pounds is going to take a lot of work. However, you cannot do it with exercise alone. In fact, I think the best intervention for any weight loss per individual or client with a weight loss goal is always going to be nutrition. And if you have 100 pounds to lose, unlike somebody who maybe has 10, if they're not exercising, exercise can get that first 10 pounds off. But if you have 100 pounds to lose, you're not doing that without a drastic dietary intervention.

So 100-pound weight loss client, you're going to have to have a lot of dialogue around calories in versus calories out, focusing on protein, focusing on getting plenty of nutritious micronutrient dense fruits and vegetables, lower calorie options. But again, because it's a 100 pound weight loss goal, and this person's already quite heavy, we might actually want to stagger how much we put on their plate, no pun intended, from a nutritional change standpoint. So that first couple weeks, maybe we just say, hey, we're not going to have any fast food for this month. And we're going to focus on eating mostly whole foods. That's your goal. And they might lose 10 pounds. And then in month two, perhaps you move on to something a

little bit more advanced and you say, okay, no fast food again this month. We're going to focus on eating mostly whole foods, but we're also going to try to track your protein intake. So you add one more small thing to their to-do list. You don't come right out of the gate and say, okay, we're tracking every macro, every micro, every single detail. Maybe by month three, you say, okay, we've been really good with cutting out fast food. We've limited processed food intake. We're tracking protein. Now we want to keep an eye on those calories. By month four, perhaps they've lost, maybe they've

lost 15, 20 pounds by now. Maybe you take a little diet break, okay? With a 100-pound weight loss goal, you're probably looking at at least, at least two years. And I know that people can say you can lose two pounds a week. So you're probably doing the math in your head and going, oh, two pounds a week, I should be able to lose that in under a year, right? Because there's 52 weeks in a year. And if I lose two pounds a week, I'll lose 104 pounds in a year. There are ups and downs in the roads to dieting. When you actually train people, when you actually work with clients, whether it's in the nutrition space, in the personal training space, in the online coaching space, whatever, if you've ever worked with clients, whether it's in the nutrition space, in the personal training space, in the online coaching space, whatever. If you've ever worked with clients, you know it's not

that linear. And there's a lot of people in the academic space who contribute fantastic research, fantastic infographs, fantastic podcasts about how this should go, but it doesn't fucking go that way when you work with real people who have real lives. It's important to understand that things take time and nothing almost ever goes exactly according to plan. So 100 pounds is probably going to take two years minimum. You want to be focusing on resistance training the majority of that time. So you build metabolically active muscle tissue. That's going to help offset some of the metabolic adaptation to weight loss. But again, this person's metabolic rate is going to come down because there's going to be large

periods of calorie deficit being implemented into the diet. So it's in your best interest as a coach, if in fact this is your client, that you take diet breaks here and there to give them the opportunity to stave off some of the negative adaptations associated with losing high amounts of body weight. But overall, in general, as a rule of thumb, a half to one pound of body weight loss per week is a pretty sustainable way to go for a very heavy person, you might lose a lot more up front. But you're looking for anywhere between a half to one pound a week, that would be a very sustainable rate of weight loss that would get this person to a healthy body weight in time. But patience is going to be important. All right. When people say, this is from at Rebecca.8, she asks, when people say it

has a good macro ratio, what does that mean? What makes a macro ratio good? So this is actually a really good question because it brings to light the general understanding of kind of the general public in regards to nutrition in terms like macros. And it makes coaches like myself and other people have to kind of check the way we speak because we go off talking in our own language, but we don't even realize that some people don't know what a macro is or what macro-friendly is. So let's first talk about macros. We've got protein, carbohydrates, and fats. Those are the four macronutrients we have that we consume the bulk of our calories from.

Alcohol is also a macronutrient, but when we talk about macros, we're talking about the big three. Protein, carbs, and fats. So it's important to understand, first and foremost, what a good macronutrient ratio is going to be is kind of dependent on what that person's goals are. when somebody says it has a good macronutrient ratio, what they're really talking about is that it has a pretty high amount of protein and a moderate amount of carbohydrates and fats that are in balance with that person's diet. So let's say this person is keto and their diet is all about fats and proteins. Well, a good macro profile for them or a good macro ratio would be something like cheese that has a lot of protein and a lot of fat. But let's say this person's doing a low-fat, high-carb, high-protein bulking phase. Well, maybe whole wheat bread that has a little bit of protein in it might be a really good

option for them. And they might say, this has great macro ratio because it has a ton of carbs, which I need. It has more protein than I thought it would. And it has almost no fat. So macro ratios and what makes a macro ratio good or bad is completely dependent on the dietary preference or the dietary protocol by which that person is adhering to. But in general, you're looking for foods for most dieters, whether the goal is fat loss or muscle gain, that have some protein in them. So a good macronutrient ratio is usually something that has a considerable amount of protein and then the right balance of carbs and fats to fit the goals of that individual. And it doesn't make it good or bad. It just makes it more aligned with that person's

diet and that person's goals. Okay. So next question is from Pablaso and she asks, I get the best workouts when I rest as much as possible in between sets. Why do some people cut their rest periods short? So let's talk about adaptations from different rest periods. So in general, if you want to get the most strength possible, you want to build the most strength you can, you want to take long rest periods because you need time for that ATP to fully regenerate for your central nervous system to fully regenerate. So you can walk up to that bar and absolutely rip it. And an example I like to give for this is moving something heavy with a friend. If you've ever, ever, ever moved a big ass piece of furniture with a friend and you're on one end and they're on the other and you're walking and it's getting

heavy and you need to put it down and you're like, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. We need to put down, down, down. And you put it down and you almost cut somebody's finger off. You don't pick it up right away. You take a breath. You look at your buddy, you go, okay, we got this. We got this. Okay. I'm going to grab it here. You're going to grab it here. Okay, cool. And then you pick it up again and you walk it inside. You put it where it needs to be. Voila. But when shit's heavy, you don't just go right at it again. You need to take a little break. You need to gather yourself. You need to be ready to lift it with proper form and technique. And that's why the best lifters in the world from a purely strength training standpoint, the people who want to optimize

strength, they usually take longer rest periods. Now, from a metabolic demand standpoint or an endurance standpoint, shortening your rest periods will allow you to adapt to do more with less ATP, to do more with lactate buildup. You won't be producing as much strength, but you'll be increasing your endurance threshold, your aerobic threshold, your lactate threshold, a lot of different things that allow you to do more with less rest. Now, if your goal is purely building muscle, you might benefit from taking longer rest periods so you can lift heavier, from taking shorter rest periods, maybe even super settings so you can build up metabolic stress. There's a lot of different rationales for different rest periods of bodybuilding or muscle gain is your goal. So there's really no wrong way to do this.

There's just a wrong way to do it if you have a specific goal. But what I've found is for most people who just want to be in better shape or most people who want to just lift a little bit more, they don't have a program that they're following, that taking what we would call auto-regulated rest periods, resting until you're ready to go again, seems to be a really good way to do things. In the programs I have on my website, I generally have rest periods anywhere from about a minute and a half to three minutes, depending on the

intensity of the set. However, I also put a stipulation in all those programs that if these rest periods aren't working for you, feel free to auto-regulate and rest as long as you need to perform the set properly. And this is something I actually work a lot with with my online clients, is I give them full reign to rest as long as needed to maximize their performance in each given set. That is of the utmost importance, right? Because no matter what the goal is, you want to rest as long as required to get the most out of the set. Unless like I said earlier, you're trying to drive an endurance adaptation or you're trying to build up some metabolic stress, at which point shortening

the rest periods is probably the only way you can go about doing that. Okay. Another great question. This one comes from Marley FE and she asks, on non-training days, should I eat the same amount of calories as on the days that I train? When I work with clients online or with the online clients that I work with, some of them have the same macros every day of the week. Some of them have different macros for each training day. And the real difference there, what sets them apart is how willing are they to make adjustments day in and day out. If you've got a client who's never tracked macros before, giving them different macros for three different days of the week is going to be a problem. You might want to go more universal. If you've had experience tracking macros before,

your client has had experience, you might have a tremendous amount of luck with giving them different macros for each day of the week or each different type of training day or low days and high days. However, to lose weight or to gain muscle, there's no real need to make daily adjustments unless it helps you stick to your diet. If at the end of the week, the calories and the macros are about where they need to be, it's not as important how you got there. Now, where we can really dive into the minutiae and dive the detail, is when we talk about maximizing performance. So a strategy I like to use with a lot of my clients is putting higher calorie, higher carbohydrate days on the days that they train legs or the days that they train the muscle

groups they're most interested in developing. Now, my reasoning for this is pretty simple. I think it's important that people have adequate fuel to train. And you'd be silly to think that you'd use the same amount of fuel to train arms and shoulders as you would to train glutes, hamstrings, and quads. There's a lot more glycogen in glutes, hamstrings, and quads. There's a lot more muscle fiber to break down in glutes, hamstrings, and quads. So, you're going to need more fuel. Nobody's ever walked out of the gym after an arm day and been like, oh my gosh, my energy is completely tanked. But that happens

all the time after legs because of the scale and the demand of those muscles. So it becomes increasingly important as you become more and more advanced that you're at least aware of the training demands of different types of exercise. So another example of this would be athletes who do skill-specific work or speed training or anything outside of the gym that might have an even greater systemic fatigue on their body. Those would be hugely important days to increase your calories, especially if your calorie output is higher, because nothing will tank your performance faster than, for example, say, Monday you do resistance training, but Tuesday you do sprints and you play an hour of basketball,

but you didn't eat enough calories. So by the time you get to Wednesday, you're still going to be tanked from Tuesday, and that's going to take all of Wednesday to recover from you're going to have a crappy session Wednesday and you might not even bounce back until Thursday or Friday so to answer the original question on non-training days should I eat the same amount of calories on training days you can if you set your calories up across the week for a lot of my clients I will give them a lower calorie intake or just have them eat at maintenance if they're bulking or in a greater deficit if they're cutting on the days that they don't train. Because again, we're losing a little bit of output from not training, but for most people, they don't burn a ton of calories working out anyway. All right, next question comes from

atjunit45, and she asks, or he asks, they don't have a profile picture, so I'm assuming they're gender. Oh my God, please don't shut down my podcast. Is it possible to gain weight on a maintenance calorie intake with good programming? So, short answer is yes, you can actually gain muscle at any calorie intake, but let's talk about why there seems to be some confusion around this. So for a long time, the fitness industry would kind of parrot or people in the fitness industry would parrot the general consensus of some in the scientific community, which was that you cannot lose fat in a calorie unless you're in a calorie deficit, which is true, but that got extended into this idea that you cannot

gain muscle unless you're in a calorie surplus. And that is not true. It's actually not true at all. So the reason that becomes problematic is because you have this myopic view of I can only gain muscle if I'm in a surplus and I can only see body recomposition or fat loss in a deficit. And there's some truth to the former or to the latter, but there's not really a lot of truth to the idea of not being able to gain muscle in a calorie maintenance deficit, anything but a surplus. So for example, a lot of clients I've worked

with in the past who are complete newbies, they'll gain a ton of muscle and a calorie deficit because they haven't been training. If you haven't been training, you're going to gain muscle when you start training no matter what you're eating, even if you're probably not eating at all and you just get trace amounts of protein. Is that ideal? Heck no. Ideally, you have a small deficit, 200 to 500 calories, something light, something that gives you a little bit of energy to put towards new tissue, but not so much that you're just going to gain a ton of fat because a lot of people overdo it on the bulks. They go nuts and they go into a monster calorie surplus.

And while having those extra calories is nice, you're not going to have all of those calories get partitioned to muscle. So some of that surplus is going to go towards unwanted body fat gain. So you can absolutely gain muscle and weight, or I should say muscle and a mild calorie at maintenance, but you're probably better in a small deficit, or I'm sorry, a small surplus. Hopefully that makes some sense. Because again, the stimulus for building muscle isn't exclusive to calorie intake, where the stimulus for fat oxidation or burning fat is very closely tied to calorie intake. Because when we don't have adequate energy, we need to liquidate that energy from somewhere and our body has pathways to do that from fat.

But if we're training really, really hard, our body's going to hold on to muscle and it's going to attempt to grow it. It might not be ideal in a deficit, but it's possible. Now, at maintenance, it's certainly going to be much more manageable because we have a better amount of calorie intake to kind of go from. It's going to help make things a lot easier. And then in that small surplus, we're going to have even more calories to help with performance and probably some extra protein to partition to muscle building. So hopefully that makes sense. Next question is from Gracie Jane 0710. She asks,

can I build muscle with only getting to the gym approximately 30 minutes a day, four to five days a week? So this is a good follow-up question to the one we just answered about calorie intake and muscle growth. And this one really has to do with intensity in the gym and muscle growth. So yeah, absolutely you can. What you'll want to do in that 30 minutes is really make intelligent decisions about exercise selection. So if you only have 30 minutes, it's going to be imperative that you select compound movements, multi-joint exercises that work a lot of muscle groups per unit of time you're applying to your training. So for example, if you went to the gym Monday through Friday, and on Monday you did bench squats and pull-ups, and then on Tuesday, you did lunges, Romanian deadlifts, and overhead

press. And then on Wednesday, you did incline bench, one-arm rows, and lunges. And you're focusing on these big movements that hit a lot of muscle groups. You're probably going to do great, even if you only have 30 minutes. Now, it's definitely not ideal, right? More time means more opportunity to rest and apply more energy to sets. And in general, the more time you have in the gym, the better results you're going to get for the most part. And 30 minutes is certainly far from ideal. But if you select the right exercises, you can set yourself up for more success than if you were to do something like, say, all isolation exercises. Because if I go to the gym and I only have 30 minutes and I do leg extensions, hamstring curls,

and bodyweight glute bridges, I'm taking three exercises just to hit my glutes. Whereas if I start right out of the gate with something like walking lunges, barbell squats, or deadlifts, I'm going to hit all three of those muscle groups with one movement. Now, it won't be as isolated of a stimulus like these isolation exercises would provide, but it would certainly give me more bang for my buck in terms of time. So, if I did three sets of leg extensions, three sets of hamstring curls, three sets of glute bridges, that's about three sets per muscle group. But if I do three sets of squats, three sets of lunges, and three sets of deadlifts, I might get like nine sets per muscle group when we talk about how that stimulus is spread across the entire kinetic chain or how it's spread across the entire body. And that's where

multi-joint exercises become exceptionally valuable for people who are on a time crunch. And you need to look further than most professional athletes who don't have a ton of time to train in season. As a matter of fact, they usually only train one to two days a week with weights. This is primarily going to be football and basketball. But they do compound focused movements to maintain as much muscle as possible across a season where they're doing things like playing, traveling, they have other obligations, all kinds of stuff, media stuff. So you get the most bang for your buck out of compound movements. And that should be what you focus on if you only have 30 minutes to go to the gym four to five times a week. Okay, now, last question. This one's from at Sid Glover, and she asks, is it beneficial to take a probiotic even if it's not regulated by the FDA? Can I recommend any? So my stance on probiotic supplementation is this. I'm up in the air on it. some that are good or let me just say like some that are better than others. Yeah, but I don't

personally take one and I don't personally take one because I'm not totally bought in to the idea that supplemental probiotics are this fantastic product and that they can just blend all these amazing strains of bacteria together to create the ultimate probiotic supplement. I prefer to get mine from food and to eat a lot of prebiotic rich fruits and vegetables. Now you hit on something here that's worth talking about, which is that, excuse me, still battling this congestion even three episodes in. Is it beneficial to take a probiotic even if it's not regulated by the FDA. So almost all supplements are not regulated by the FDA. The FDA actually has to come in and say, okay, we want to check on this supplement because the nutritional supplement space has run is just, it's the fucking wild west of fitness. Anybody and their mother can

make a supplement. There's companies that literally are paid to just put shit in a bottle for you. So I cannot tell you how many people out there just go out and build supplements. And I was listening to an audio book this morning. This will be the third time through it. I strongly recommend it. It's called Nutrition Made Clear. It's a great courses audio book that's available through Audible. I'm not sure if it's available on other platforms, but it's like a 20 hour long audio book. And, um, the woman who gives a class is absolutely unbelievable. I'm going to pull it up on my phone right here so I can give her due, uh, due credit. And she's somebody who I plan on having on the podcast

in the future, but her name is Roberta and Ling, and she teaches at the Baylor College of Medicine. And I don't want to misquote her, but it was somewhere between 40% and 60% of weight loss products have things in the product that aren't listed in the label. And this is from not being regulated by the FDA. And this is why you can have these insane label claims like X supplement can fix X disease or X supplement can fix X issue. And it's truly the Wild West. And whatever you take is kind of on the consumer to make a good decision.

And that's a large reason why I partnered with Legion when it came to choosing a supplement partner. It isn't because I only take Legion or I think Legion is it came to choosing a supplement partner. It isn't because I only take Legion, or I think Legion is far and away the best supplement company in the game. I really think Legion does a tremendous job, but I appreciate their transparency. I appreciate their process, and I appreciate that they show their customers what's on the label and that they make an effort to explain why it's in there. And that's not the case for about 90% of the companies in this fitness space. So while I do think that there

might be a bright future for probiotic supplementation as we learn more about the gut, particularly more about individual strains, I'm not on board just yet. So I'm not going to take any. And when it comes to the FDA regulating them, it's not just probiotics you need to be worried about. It's every single supplement that you put into your body. And as a general rule of thumb, the sketchier it looks, the sketchier the claims it makes, the more careful you have to be. And so here are some like nutritional supplement fraudulent terms that you need to be on the lookout for nowadays because you'll see these a lot. One of them is advertisement about secret ingredients they don't want you to know about.

I'm sure you've seen this. This product contains a secret ingredient that doctors don't want you to know about. The reason that doctors don't want you to know about it is because the supplement company is going to tell you that this supplement will make your dick three inches bigger, you'll get fucking massive muscles and you'll be ripped. When in actuality, it's all just pure crap. But you make that claim that they're secret ingredients and it's on the cutting edge and people really buy into it. Another thing they'll do is they'll use bullshit terms like lipoactive and like, you know, liposomal absorption technology, which is all made up shit. And people see that and they go, oh my gosh, liposomal absorption technology. Oh, lipoactive. Oh my God, that sounds really cool.

And people get a boner for this stuff. And they're like, oh dude, well, my supplement has, you know, optimal bullshit absorption technology. But people don't see through that. Because again, you can call something for the most part in the supplement space, whatever the fuck you want. And something interesting that I've actually seen a lot, you know, I'm not to name names because I don't want to get sued by a supplement company, but there are many supplement companies that actually will put the full name of a supplement in

an effort to sound cool or different, or they'll put a unique proprietary name on a supplement to make it sound way badass. So for example, when they put a proprietary name on something, like they want to name it something cool, they'll do something called like betaine anhydrous. So betaine anhydrous is a real thing. But some people in some supplements, you'll see it as like beta power. But really, it's just what we would call trimethylglycine. That trimethylglycine is what betaine is. And so some companies will go, oh, well, we want to sound smart. So let's call it trimethylglycine. And other companies will go, oh, well, let's call it by something cool. So they'll call it, you know, Betamax beet juice 5000. Another one is like creatine magnesium chelate, which is just creatine bound to a chelated magnesium. And they call it, or chelate, whatever you want to call it, they call it creatine magna power.

And it's like, oh fuck dude, this has creatine magna power in it? Like that's got to be 10 times better than creatine monohydrate, when in actuality it's really just bullshit that they can put on a label to get people to buy it. And this has been going on forever. And you needn't look much further than like the first few shelves at any supplement retailer you'll find yourself in. Like you will absolutely see, you will absolutely see this is running rampant right now. And a lot of it has to do with the fact that because supplements kind of live in their own unique weird space, that the FDA just can't really regulate them. So it's up to the consumer, people like yourself and myself and anybody listening, to make educated decisions and try to purchase your supplements from brands that have a reputable team of people behind them, a board of people who advise them

from a scientific standpoint, and people who've attached their credibility to this line that you trust. And I don't think that influencers or people on Instagram are trustworthy sources of nutritional information. There's a reason that when I did my brand partnership with Legion, me getting paid was not something that mattered to me. I just want to connect my listeners with products that I think is valuable. I don't need an affiliate kickback, right? Like I don't, so I don't get paid by Legion, period. It becomes much more important to me as somebody who has a real job where I make real money that I protect my reputation and I align myself with brands that

I think provide value to the space and are integrous. But if all of your money comes from selling products with your discount code, because a lot of companies would rather pay athletes to bullshit. I cannot believe I called them athletes. They're not fucking athletes. Okay. Being a whore on Instagram does not make you an athlete. I'm sorry. Doing a bikini competition does not make you an athlete. What it really means is you were the best at starving yourself for a prolonged period of time and you walked up on stage and you looked really good, but bodybuilding is not, it's not a sport. Okay. It's a pageant where people lift really hard. They diet really hard. It's really fucking hard. Bodybuilding is really hard. A lot of people take steroids to make it a lot less hard, but bodybuilding's hard.

At the end of the day, it's just a pageant, okay? These people are not athletes. Many of them make the entirety of their income from selling these products, so you just have to be careful, okay? Just be careful. That includes me. I have a vested interest. I have a bias. We all have a vested interest. We all have a bias. Be selective with who you trust. And again, to anybody who's competed, if you consider yourself an athlete, fuck me, okay? I don't want to steal your thunder. That's my opinion, and I'm sorry if that came across as a little bit vulgar, a little bit mean. You don't have to take anything I say to heart because I've never been on a bodybuilding stage because guess what? I don't like starving myself and I'm a pussy. So, hey, you know what? You got one thing on me that I'll probably never do. So,

don't get mad at me. It is what it is. All right, guys. So, that's it. That's the last question from today's Q&A episode. Thank you so much for tuning in. And again, Last question from today's Q&A episode. Thank you so much for tuning in. And again, just a reminder, I'm doing a giveaway for you guys who are the first listeners of these first couple episodes to help get this thing off the ground running. So again, I'm going to pick two winners from today's episode who subscribe to the podcast, leave a five-star review, and share it on their Instagram story. Now, here's the kicker. I need you to tag me in the story. That's the only way I'm going to be able to track it and see that you listened. If you just screenshot it and upload it to your story, that's awesome. I'll always appreciate it, but share it

with my tag on it. That way I get a notification that you watched it and I can see it and I can pick a winner, but I'll be picking two people to select any program of their choosing from my website. Again, that's going to either be Foundations, which is my four-day-a-week hybrid program for men and women, or my five-day-a-week female Foundations physique program, both of which are fantastic. And I look forward to seeing what you guys think of the podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in, and as always, best of luck with your health. Enjoy your day. Do something productive. Be a good person. Have a good one.