Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 377: Stop Making these THREE Training Mistakes (how many lifts? hard sets, effective reps + MORE)

Episode Date: July 24, 2024

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Welcome in everybody to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. As always, I'm your host, Danny Matranga, and in today's fitness focused episode, we will be discussing what I believe to be three very common errors many novice lifters make. This is actually pulled from a longer form YouTube video I did over on my channel, but this content specifically today is going to be focused on the three errors of doing too many exercises. I will discuss with you what I believe the sweet spot to be and why I think seven, eight, nine, 10 different lifts for the same body part is overkill. I'll be discussing the difference between hard sets and effective reps and why you want to have both hard sets and effective reps in your training and why that should be the proxy for what you're doing in the gym. Not total volume, not necessarily number of exercises. And lastly, we will talk about the common error of exercise rotation or adding in new exercises, rotating quote unquote old ones out and the optimal frequency for changing shit up.

I guarantee you it's probably less than you think. Enjoy the episode today. This is episode 377. This podcast has some awesome partners and one of my favorite, of course, is Legion Athletics. Legion is my go to supplement manufacturer for what I like to call my big rock supplements. This would be my protein powder, my pre-training formula, my post-training formula and creatine, and my kind of ancillary vitamins and micronutrient protection. So why do I like Legion so much? What sets them apart? nutrient protection. So why do I like Legion so much? What sets them apart? It's quite simple.

Legion uses all natural ingredients. All the formulas include natural coloring and natural sweeteners. No artificial sweeteners, just stevia. And every single formulation, be it a pre-workout or a vitamin, contains clinically effective dosages of ingredients shown to work in humans in clinical research supported by robust trials. No filler, just legit ingredients in each and every formulation proven to work. The whey protein isolate is so light. It's fantastic. It mixes in water. It tastes amazing. And I drink it every day, even as somebody who's lactose intolerant. That's just how high quality this whey protein is. And it's sourced from Irish dairy cows that are raised well, eat their natural diet, and packaged in climate-friendly packaging. I love their plant protein too, for those of you who like something that's a little

on the thicker side and you aren't a fan of animal products. Also, I love Legion's pre-workout, but specifically the pre-workout that does not contain caffeine. That would be their Stem Free Pulse. I'm a huge, huge fan of beta alanine and L-citrulline, but I don't like taking in wildly high amounts of caffeine. So if you are somebody who likes pre-workout with caffeine, you can try Pulse. Or if you like it without caffeine because you maybe want to enjoy your morning coffee or monitor your caffeine consumption, try the Pulse Stim Free. My favorite flavors there for sure are the New Grape and the amazing, amazing Tropical Punch. As for my creatine, I get that from Legion's Recharge.

Five grams each and every day. I take it on the days I train as well as the days I do not because Recharge also contains L-carnitine, which can help with promoting muscle recovery and decreasing soreness, as well as some ingredients to help with creatine utilization. And of course, my favorite supplements for my ancillary micronutrient health are Legion's multivitamin and Legion's greens powder. Not only do these two products contain a ton of high quality vitamins and minerals, they also contain unique adaptogens like KSM 66 ashwagandha and reishi mushroom, which I like to take each and every day to promote my health. If you want to cover all your bases with a high quality protein, creatine post-workout or the ancillary micronutrient health stuff like greens, powders and multivitamin, I encourage you to go over to legionathletics.com and check out using the promo code Danny.

and check out using the promo code DANNY. That'll save you 20% on your first order and you'll rack up points that you can use the same way as cash every time you use the code and you'll also be supporting the show. Welcome into the studio, everybody. In today's video, we're going to be discussing three common errors made by new fitness enthusiasts.

If you are watching this channel and like me, you got really into working out really fast then this is a perfect video for you. We're gonna go over some of the most common mistakes from exercise order, from exercise number, from programming to execution. A lot of the mistakes that I made and many other new lifters make when when they start exercising, they get super excited. This video is going to save you years. I'm talking years of mistakes and fuck ups that I made, and it will have you training on the right track. So let's get into the first mistake you do not want to make when it comes to exercise routine, scheduling, and

programming. So a very common mistake a lot of new lifters make is including far too many exercises in their training program. You only want to do so many exercises in a program and you definitely only want to do so many on a given day. When you're new and everything looks fun and exciting, it's not uncommon to make the mistake of doing 20 different exercises on a given session. I know that sounds insane, but I literally used to go to the gym and I would do overhead tricep extensions and hammer curls to start every session.

I would start with arms, which is stupid, but then I would take that level of stupid and go to an even higher level of stupid. I would do flat bench and flat dumbbell flies, incline bench and incline dumbbell flies. Then I would do, of course, decline bench and decline dumbbell flies. So I would have done eight exercises, six of which were for the chest and two were for the arms. And I would do that multiple times a week. There was absolutely no reason whatsoever to probably do five of those. Let me explain. So in the example I just gave you, I did two arm exercises and six chest exercises. And the truth is, for many of you,

you probably only need one to two exercises per muscle group in a given day. If you're training upper body, you could do a bench press for the chest, a row for the back, an overhead press for the shoulders, and probably squeak out with three exercises. But a lot of novices want to do every exercise they can think of for every body part that they're going to train that day. I even remember doing full chest days where I would play with that routine and hilariously try to pair incline bench with decline flies and incline flies with decline bench to take advantage of all this crazy mix and match shit. But the truth was, I was just really excited to train. I loved exercising and a lot of what I was doing wasn't hurting me,

but I wasn't making any gains. I wasn't making any progress. wasn't making any gains. I wasn't making any progress. I was simply doing far too many exercises for the exercise that I was doing to be meaningful. And what I mean by that was, let's say I did that first set, first three sets of flat bench, and I did those flat flies next. Those were probably good. Those had B plus effort, but the incline press and the incline flies had like C plus, C minus effort, and the decline bench and the decline flies had D to D minus effort. Which of those three series of exercises was going to be the best for my growth as a novice lifter? The first two that were done with high intensity when I was fresh, the second two with moderate

intensity when I was kind of fatigued, or the last two with dog shit intensity when I had no juice. The first, hopefully that's what you guessed. If not, you're probably fucked. But if you guessed the first exercise when you were fresh, you're right. And that is a principle that is integral to training hard and making progress. Do work when you're fresh, that's meaningful and intentional. Don't just do work to do it. Which brings me to my second thing holds back so many lifters. The first point of just doing too many exercises really blends into

the second point, which is what I would call junk volume. And that is how much of the volume you're doing in the gym, how much of the reps that you're doing are actually growing muscle. And a good way to conceptualize this is to introduce what are called hard sets or effective reps into the mix. Effective reps or hard sets, they kind of go together. Effective reps are the reps done very close to failure, typically at the end of the set under substantial load. Another way to look at these are as productive sets or hard sets, which means of the sets I did, most of them were hard and close to failure. Junk volume or volume that

is done for the sake of doing it, that isn't close to failure, that isn't challenging, is probably fine for your health. It's calories burned. It's blood sugar mobilized. There's lots of benefits, but not for growth and strength. If your effort in the gym is not substantial, your proximity to failure is low, and you're going through the motions the way I described with the incline and the decline bench, you're probably playing a lot with junk volume. I'll give you a good example here of one set done to failure. good example here of one set done to failure. This might be strange if you only have audio, but the visuals great. If I do this set of tricep extensions. This is a submaximal weight not

close to failure. And I say hey, I'm gonna do 12 reps. This is 910 11 and 12. Okay, I'm done. I did my 12 reps. I'd argue that all 12 reps were junk. None of those reps were close to failure. None of them were heavy enough. So for this to be an effective set or a hard set, and for me to tap into these effective reps, I have to get close to failure.

And you'll see in the video, I'm slowing down. I'm feeling substantial pump, I'm getting close to not being able to do a full rep, and okay I failed. That set was effective. Those reps were effective. That was a hard set. It was more reps than the first set, But that's not the point. The point is only one of those sets was close to failure. The other one was checking a box. When you're starting with weightlifting, remember this.

More is not better. Better is better. What's going on, guys? Taking a break from this episode to tell you a little bit about my coaching company, core coaching method, 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 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, 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. I used to go to the gym and make this mistake. I would do tons of exercises, none of them close to failure. None of that was building strength or muscle. It was just

burning calories and blood sugar. Yes, it did affect my physique. Some of it probably made me a little more muscular than I otherwise would have been. But if I could have that time back, cut my volume like in half and make all those sets much closer to failure, I'd be bigger and more muscular than I am right now. I had to unlearn a lot of these bad habits, and I don't want you to do the same. Let's go to the third thing that you want to avoid. It makes sense that the longer you've been training, the more bored you might get of the basics. training, the more bored you might get of the basics. Many of us started, I know I did, with a barbell. Barbell squats, barbell deadlifts, barbell cleans, barbell bench press, barbell overhead press, barbell front squats. All these exercises done with a barbell. And when I went

from training in a weight room to training in a gym, all of the machines became fascinating to me. And so what happened was barbell bench became machine press. Barbell squats became hack squats. Deadlifts became hip thrusts. Cleans became non-existent. Front squats were swapped for leg press. And while those machine variations are incredible, the point I really want to communicate is you're never too good to progress on the basics. You see a lot of new lifters say goodbye to push-ups and pull-ups and lunges. They say goodbye to squats and bench press in favor of variations and crazy shit that they might see on the internet or for machines. And they make a huge mistake of constantly popping around and sliding things in

and out. Oh, I did bench on Monday, but this Monday I'm going to do machine press. Fine, they're both still a press. But swapping things around all the time or thinking you're too good for the basics is a mistake. I think two things are true. The basics should probably always stay in your program if they don't cause pain. If in your 30s you do barbell bench, and then in your 40s you switch to a dumbbell bench, and then in your 50s you switch to a machine press, that makes sense. I get it. But every fucking week, trading them out is actually going to hurt your gains. You need to do these movements long enough that you make progress. You need to keep them in your routine for weeks, if not months on end to drive the progression until the curve gets flat.

Here's what I mean. When you first start doing an exercise, the progression happens really fast. And then as you get better, it slows down and the line of progression actually flattens. You want to reach a place where the progression flattens before you switch exercises. If you're constantly switching too early, you never have a takeoff period, you never actually improve, and you never hit that point of resistance and friction where a lot of the gains come. Stick with your exercises longer. Be okay with going up in weight by five pounds, two and a half pounds, even one and a quarter pound plates. We have these in the gym because when you've been training as long as I have and as long as many of our clients have, these kinds of jumps, jumps in five, two and a

half, and even one and a quarter pounds on the most basic exercises, they make a difference. You need to make progressions but you also need to not make the mistake of constantly pulling stuff out to put something new in. The shiny object syndrome that we like in the world outside of the gym can oftentimes be your biggest enemy to making progress. The simplest exercises, the ones that your grandpa probably did, are still the bedrock of foundationally good programming. You never have to stop doing them unless pain, injury, or dysfunction

tells you otherwise. You're never too good for the basics. And when you find a new exercise and you incorporate it into your routine, stick with it for weeks if not months to get to the point where that progression curve flattens. You're gonna suck at it, you're gonna improve, improve, improve, improve, improve, improve, and then you'll finally hit about a plateau. Don't stop when you suck at it. Stop when you hit that plateau. And if you're not willing to stick with something long enough to plateau and improve, it's not a great exercise because most of the gains you get in the gym come from sucking and getting better at that thing you sucked at. And many of you swap simply because you saw an exercise existed. One of the dumbest things you can do in the gym is add an

exercise to your program just because you saw it exists on social media. It is oftentimes the case that these exercises are inefficient, not nearly as effective as the basics, and because you suck at them or have not done them yet, your output will be much lower than sticking with something you already know how to do and can still get better at. So don't have shiny object syndrome guys, don't make these mistakes. So let's quickly review these three big mistakes. The first is having way too many exercises in your session because you're excited.

I get it. You go to the gym. Maybe you're training chest. You want to do every chest exercise you know about. Fine. Try that. It's not going to hurt you, but it will be substantially less effective than sticking to like four to six exercises and doing

them hard. Which brings me to my second point. Doing them hard. That's what she said. But seriously, if your sets are not challenging or close to failure, they will be a lot less effective. Stay away from junk volume. That's the volume you do where you're simply going through the motions. You're not close to failure. It's not bad for you. It's not going to hurt you. It's just time spent inefficiently. And finally, the third thing, don't feel the need to incorporate new flashy, sexy exercises

just because you saw them. Ruthlessly progress the basics or whatever the hell is in your programming for weeks and weeks and weeks and months and months and months You don't need a new workout plan every week. You absolutely do not need a new workout plan every week Maybe every month. Yes, but week to week things should look pretty similar Thanks for watching the video guys Be sure to hit the notification bell subscribe to the channel and check out some of the other long-form content we have here on the podcast and on the other socials. We'll catch you on the next video.