Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 51 - Mailbag: Pre-Workout, Hydration, Overtraining

Episode Date: July 10, 2020

In this episode, Danny sits down and answers YOUR questions. These questions are submitted directly to Danny's inbox HERE! Today's questions cover:Hydration, bloating, and getting enough water.Pre-workout, when to take it and should you take it if you train later in the day.Overtraining, training for gains if you have an active job.---Thanks For Listening!---RESOURCES/COACHING: I am all about education and that is not limited to this podcast! Feel free to grab a FREE guide (Nutrition, Training, Macros, Etc!) HERE! Interested in Working With Coach Danny and His One-On-One Coaching Team? Click HERE! Want To Have YOUR Question Answered On an Upcoming Episode of DYNAMIC DIALOGUE? You Can Submit It HERE!Want to Support The Podcast AND Get in Better Shape? Grab a Program HERE!----SOCIAL LINKS:Follow Coach Danny on INSTAGRAMFollow Coach Danny on TwitterFollow Coach Danny on FacebookGet More In-Depth Articles Written By Yours’ Truly HERE!Support the Show.

Welcome in you guys to a quick Friday mailbag episode. In today's episode, I'm going to go through my email inbox and answer questions you guys asked directly. Now, these are different from my traditional Q&As where I grab questions on Instagram. And my main goal with these is to answer a little bit fewer questions, but go more in depth by giving you guys the ability to answer longer form questions. So if you want to have your question featured on the next mailbag episode of the podcast, go to www.coachedannymetrenga.com slash podcast dash questions. Or you can just head over to the link in my Instagram bio, click it,

and then scroll all the way to the bottom and you'll see the prompts to have your question asked on the podcast. So that being said, guys, today's topics are going to be related to overtraining, hydration, and pre-workout. So first question regarding overtraining comes from Connor Goey, and he asks, Hey Danny, I'm a wildland firefighter and we do a lot of training on the job. I've also been training on my own and it seems it's almost not enough or it seems on my own as though it's not enough. Some days I feel like I'm overtraining and others I'm fine. Any tips on knowing how to balance it. So essentially what Connor's asking is how does he balance the demands of a physically active job like being a wildland firefighter, which for those of you who don't know

is one of the most arduous jobs you could probably have, and his fitness goals and just generally being able to train to not only stay in shape for work, but probably also for performance and aesthetics. Now, one thing I will tell you is this. If you have a very physically demanding job, a la construction, wildland firefighting, things of that nature, you are going to have to eat quite a bit of food. You see, people generally assume that exercise is the way in which we burn the most calories. If we were to say, hey, where do you burn the majority of your calories throughout the day? A lot of people would assume it's during their workout. Now, that might be the case if you have a really tough workout, but the average workout is probably only 60 to 90 minutes.

Somebody doing a physically demanding job like wildland firefighting for an eight to anywhere up to 24 hour long shift, which some of these guys have to work, the caloric expenditure is probably through the roof. Not to mention, there's always the stress of a potential emergency or who knows what could happen. So the stress paired with the high amount of output would 100%, my first recommendation for you, Connor, would be make sure you are eating enough food. If you're feeling the symptoms of overtraining, you're training in the gym, and you have a really physically demanding job, it's really, really important that you are getting enough food in and getting enough sleep. So with regards to balancing the demands of your work and balancing the demands of your training, unfortunately, someone in your situation is going to have to put a lot greater emphasis on nailing overall caloric intake, nailing macronutrient intake. I would really, really

focus on nutrient timing, right? The right amount of calories and the macros are the cake, if nutrition was a cake. But nutrient timing is the icing. And you want to make sure you're doing everything possible to recover and balance these stressors. So I would really focus on your nutrition. I would make sure if you can, you get seven to nine hours of sleep when you're not working a 24-hour shift. A lot of firefighters do, and they struggle with sleep because they're effectively on call. So get a lot of sleep when you are not working. And then with regards to your training, train harder on the days you don't work.

And if you're working out on the days that you work, maybe you taper it back a little bit. And also look to hydration as a way to increase and improve recovery. Hydration often gets overlooked, but it's one of the most important avenues we have for making sure we get nutrients to and from tissues and that we don't necessarily, we maintain a high tissue quality despite tons and tons of work. So the second question is from Ariana Stone. And Ariana asks, Hi, Danny, love the podcast and your content. Keep doing what you're doing. My question is, when increasing your water intake, not to an excessive amount, but actually trying to reach

about half your body weight in ounces, is it common to feel more bloated? Or will the increased water intake actually lean you out? So this is a really good question. And I think it's important that we consider this in the context of the fact that water and water retention and bloating are influenced by a great many things. Specifically for females, it's going to be influenced by the different various hormones that somebody's going to have, particularly during the menstrual cycle. That can really impact water retention. Another thing we have to look at is nutritional status. What's the carbohydrate intake like? What's the sodium intake like? Those can influence holding on to more water. But yeah, if you weren't drinking a lot of water and you started drinking more water

in an effort to increase your overall hydration, it's very common to feel as though you're holding on to more water. It's very common to feel as though you have to go to the bathroom extremely frequently while your body acclimates, right? Can the increased water intake actually help you lean out? Sure. I think most of that would be indirectly. And by that, I mean, it would help you lean out by virtue of making sure that you're adequately hydrated so you can perform at the highest level, recover at the highest level. Hydration plays a big role in regulation of appetite. So if you're

getting the right amount of food, generally speaking, if you get a little bit of water in there too, you will be fuller. Now, if you're just totally starving yourself, I don't think water is going to necessarily curtail your appetite. But if you're eating in a modest calorie deficit, for example, and you have two people eating the same amount of calories, one's drinking 20 ounces of water, the other's drinking half their body weight in ounces of water, the person drinking half their body weight in ounces is probably going to feel fuller purely by virtue of having that expansion at the level of the stomach. There's mechanoreceptors in the stomach that actually detect changes in that tissue lining.

So once the stomach is fuller, it actually sends signals to the brain that we can kind of shut down those hunger responses to a certain degree, and water can definitely help with that. So in short, I think it's very, very possible that water can indirectly help you lean out, particularly if you're eating right, but it is not uncommon to feel bloating when you first start increasing your fluid intake. not uncommon to feel bloating when you first start increasing your fluid intake. Hey guys, just wanted to take a quick second to say thanks so much for listening to the podcast. And if you're finding value, it would mean the world to me if you would share it on your social media. Simply screenshot whatever platform you're listening to and share the episode to your

Instagram story or share it to Facebook. But be sure to tag me so I can say thanks and we can chat it up about what you liked and how I can continue to improve. Thanks so much for supporting the podcast and enjoy the rest of the episode. All right, guys. So last question comes from Cameron Stewart and he says, I had a question for you about pre-workout, specifically pre-workout with caffeine and how to manage it when lifting in the afternoon. I really like the effect of pre-workout and how it impacts my heavy training sessions, but I do prefer afternoon lifts. Caffeine after 12 o'clock can have negative effects on sleep, which I'd like to avoid because that's where the gains happen. I'd love to hear your thoughts on

this and if it's something simple as just taking pre-workout that doesn't have caffeine on the days I lift in the afternoon, or if it's okay taking the risk of compromising sleep a couple nights each week. And then he asked me to email him. So here's what I would say, Cameron. I really think it's important that if you enjoy the way something makes you feel in life, that you do balance that out. And so my initial thing would be, okay, maybe you do understand that, yeah, the likelihood of this pre-workout impacting your sleep if you take it afternoon might be higher. However, if you take

pre-workout and say you lift at one or two o'clock and you go to bed at 9, 10, 11 o'clock and you sleep 7 to 9 hours and you wake up feeling rested and you don't notice any deleterious effects, I don't think you need to cut it out. Could we say that there's the potential for caffeine to really impact REM sleep? Yeah. But if you're not noticing a tangible impact on your sleep, if you're not feeling lethargic, if you're not waking up and feeling groggy, there might be a chance that you could be a relatively quick metabolizer of caffeine.

And if that's the case, you might be able to have it later in the day. If we're talking like four, five, six, you know, just a couple hours before bed, maybe those are the days that you opt for the stimulant-free version of pre-workout. I think it's really important here to take everything in context and look at yourself as an N of one. We definitely know caffeine has a negative impact on sleep, but if you're not feeling it and you feel like you found a good time for yourself to take it and perhaps you metabolize it fast, I don't know if there's any reason to change it. And if you want to work away from having more caffeine, you can always buy pre-workout that does not contain caffeine and then buy caffeine pills. And I've seen these in sizes ranging from 50 milligrams all the way up to 200 milligrams.

And just supplementing your pre-workout with a caffeine pill, gradually working towards a smaller and smaller dosage and kind of getting away from that dependency. The thing with caffeine is we tend to build up a tolerance relatively quickly. And so a lot of the effect we get from it when we take our pre-workout is from the associative tingles from things like beta-alanine, the taste, the perception of shaking the bottle and understanding that we're getting closer to our workout. Or if it's an energy drink, it's the cracking of the lid. It's a multifactorial, multisensorial thing that works on a level that goes deeper than just the caffeine. For example, if I gave you pre-workout and you didn't know it was pre-workout,

it might not have the same impact as knowing that something is pre-workout. There's an expectation impact there. So all of that to say, there might well be a way for you to find a balance here, and you might just have to play with things. I would recommend a stimulant-free pre-workout, but like I said, if it's not bothering your sleep, which according to this question, it doesn't look like you're having any sleep-specific issues, I might, yeah, save it for those heavier training days. Maybe you take your fully stimulant pre-workout on your leg days and you metabolize it quickly and have no problem sleeping. And maybe you take one scoop or a stimulant-free on the days that you feel as though you don't need it. That might help you mitigate the tolerance buildup. It might help you get more out of it longer. It might help you get better sleep on the days you take stimulant-free

if, in fact, it is impacting your sleep. But overall, man, I would say don't freak out about it too much. Yes, caffeine afternoon can have a negative impact on sleep, but everybody's unique and we all metabolize caffeine at a different rate. It does have a half-life, but people metabolize it differently. So don't freak out too much. Definitely keep it in your routine if it impacts your performance positively, but do look to get creative and stay agile and quick on your feet. All right, guys, So that does it for today's quick mailbag. I'm actually in between sessions and recording this in my living room. But again, I'm committed to getting you guys one to two podcasts a week. I so appreciate you guys tuning in. Let me know if you liked this quicker episode,

trying to keep the sky south of about 15 minutes so that you guys can get it in quick on your way to work, on your commute, on a walk, whatever it is that you may do that helps keep you active, keeps the money rolling in, or just keeps you from being bored. Thanks so much for tuning in, guys. Chat soon. Bye. you