Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 53 - Q+A: Lean Bulking, Quad Growth, Good vs Bad Clients, Home Glute Work and More

Episode Date: July 16, 2020

In this episode, Danny answers your questions on a variety of topics, including:How much protein should you eatDoes he have an "ideal" or "least favorite" type of clientHow to properly lean bulkBest exercises for quad growthTraining glutes from homeAnd MORE!----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 back you guys to another episode of the podcast. What podcast is that you ask? Well, of course, the dynamic dialogue podcast hosted by yours truly, Danny Matranga, the only fitness podcast host in the world who comes to you after he does nine sessions on a Tuesday because I owe you guys content. I like to create content. I like to educate. And I won't lie, it's 514 here on the West Coast. I have been working since 6am and I am a little bit tired, but I owe you guys two podcasts a week and I love making them. So thank you so much for tuning in and bear with me today as we go through the Q&A. I am a little bit tired, but I am very much committed to making sure that we get through this. So without further ado, let's dive in to the, not the mailbag, but the Instagram Q&A. I

got tons and tons and tons of questions on my most recent poll, and there's a ton of variety here. So I have not picked these out ahead of time or pre-prepared answers because I like things to be authentic and raw, unlike a lot of podcasts who say they're authentic and say they're raw and everything's really just pre-prepared so they can sell product. This is not that. We're shooting from the hip. This is not that. We're shooting from the hip. So the first question I have for you guys today, or I should say the first answer I have for you guys today,

I don't have any questions for you today, thankfully. Too tired for questions. But the first answer I have is for at Courtney underscore Thomas. And she asks, how do you properly figure out the amount of calories you should be consuming in a day? So a lot of people, when they're trying to figure out how many calories to eat, whether it's to change their body composition with regards to gaining muscle or losing fat, mistakenly calculate their BMR, their base metabolic rate. They think, oh, I need to eat less than my BMR.

And that's completely and entirely incorrect. The number that you're looking to calculate or look to if you're trying to manipulate your body composition is your total daily energy expenditure, your TDEE. And that represents how many calories you burn in a day. Your BMR is just a piece of your TDEE. Your BMR, your neat non-exercise activity thermogenesis, the thermic effect of food, and your exercise activity thermogenesis, or your eat, make up your TDEE. If you want to lose body fat, you need to eat less than your TDEE and spread your macros out accordingly, prioritizing things like protein. If you want to gain muscle mass, you need to eat a little bit more than your TDEE and prioritize protein all the same, but also focus on getting adequate amounts of dietary

carbohydrate to fuel resistance training. Now, how do you properly figure out the amount of calories you should be consuming in a day is the question, but what if body composition isn't the goal? Well, that's a time where you might focus on eating right at your TDEE. Not more or not less, just eating what you need and focusing primarily on whole foods. Now, how do you calculate your TDEE? There's multiple ways. You can use an online TDEE calculator. There are several good ones. Or you can download the Nutrition Fundamentals ebook on my website that will walk you through exactly how to do this and much more, including how to actually determine your macros with the equations built right into the ebook. It's very easy and very, very simple. Next question is from at Adore Sani. And she asks, do you recommend pre-workout? So

the answer here is yes and no, and it depends, all rolled up into one. So I enjoy pre-workout on occasion. And before we dive into it, let me just say pre-workout is essentially just a caffeinated sports drink, if you will, sands the carbohydrate with the goal of improving muscle pump performance in managing fatigue. Common pre-workout ingredients include, of course, caffeine, L-citrulline, beta-alanine, betaine, and hydris. Just to name a few things, usually you will see things like ascorbic acid, vitamin B12, niacin, and occasionally creatine monohydrate or designer forms of creatine, depending on the maker. All of those things are fine around your pre-workout. I do not recommend

caffeinated pre-workout for most people. Culturally, at least here in America, many people consume caffeine all day long to the tune of being literally addicted to caffeine. They need it at all times to do almost anything. And while I do think caffeine has acute performance enhancing benefits, the research shows that those wear off very quickly after just a few uses. And after a few weeks, you're mostly just taking caffeine not to feel tired. So I recommend a stimulant-free pre-workout. And I am a big fan of the company Legion. In full transparent disclosure, I do work with Legion, but the good news is we have a brand deal

in which I'm not getting paid a ton of money to sell you products. So there are plenty of other good companies out there that produce supplements. One of the other companies I really like is Nutribio. But generally speaking, I've always been a big fan of Legion Athletics Pulse pre-workout. And what I look for in a pre-workout is a stimulant-free version. There is a stimulant-free version of Legion's Pulse. I like L-citrulline to be present, or citrulline malate. I like betaine. I like L-theanine if there is caffeine.

I need neither, so I don't really look for those two. But I like citrulline, beta alanine, betaine, and that's really about it. And if you can take those and you're training early in the morning, toss some caffeine in. If you're training in the evening, I would get one without it.

And that should work just fine. So next question is from Jeeks at Jecks Mary, Jexy Mary. And she asks, my glutes got smaller because gyms are closed. How to get bigger glutes with home workouts? So here's something really cool that I learned from Brett Contreras, the glute guy, and one of his coaches when I went and visited the glute lab. I actually went to the glute lab in 2018 for a seminar that Brett did with Brad Schoenfeld and Alan Aragon, And there was a three-hour glute training practical on both days. And then I went again in 2019 when I went down for

a just visit with my buddies. We went down to celebrate 420 and actually see Joe Rogan do some stand-up down there on April 20th. And I dropped by the glute lab and trained with my man Bryce, who no longer works there. But one of the interesting things I've learned about the glutes, and I learned these from my visits to the glute lab, and I think it's important to give credit where credit is due, is that the glutes have the interesting kind of unique property of being able to achieve peak level contraction with very little weight. And this has shown up in the research as far as I've been told by the folks down at the glute lab. So as far as body weight training goes, you can actually get a tremendous amount of activation in your glutes from body weight training.

The movement types aren't really going to change. In the same way I would recommend a barbell hip thrust, a Bulgarian split squat, a walking lunge, a Romanian deadlift recommend a barbell hip thrust, a Bulgarian split squat, a walking lunge, a Romanian deadlift, a barbell back squat, a conventional deadlift for developing your glutes, I would totally recommend all of the same patterns when training at home. Even if you have limited equipment, you can still do things like bridges and hip thrusts, lunges, and squats. You can even work in forms of hinging like a single leg RDL or even hamstring

sliders, which while they don't effectively train hip extension, you do extend the hips while you train eccentric knee flexion and knee extension, which are pretty damn good for developing your hamstrings. And if you've been training for any amount of time, you'll know that a nice set of hamstrings pairs beautifully with a good set of glutes. Something I might recommend is band work as a way to build up metabolic stress and hopefully get a little bit of a pump and sensation in some of those lateral glute tissues like the gluteus medius and maximus. But band work and body weight glute training should more than suffice. All right, so next question is from One Coner, and he asks, can you bulk and gain muscle without gaining any fat? Well, that is a little bit tricky. And while you can certainly gain

muscle in a modest calorie surplus that would very much mitigate a ton of extraneous fat gain, I would say it's borderline impossible to technically bulk being in a calorie surplus and gain muscle. What you might, or I'm sorry, and gain muscle without gaining body fat. Very big caveat there. While I do believe it is optimal to gain muscle in a mild calorie surplus, which will allow and facilitate quite a bit of muscle gain while minimizing fat gain, if you truly want to gain muscle without gaining any fat, I might just train at your TDEE. So not in a deficit. That might be a little bit too slow, but maybe not in a surplus. Maybe a 1-200 calorie surplus above your TDEE or even at your TDE. But in most instances, the amount of

fat gain you'll gain from a 300 to 500 calorie, quote unquote, lean bulk is going to be really minimal, especially if you go slow. Now, if you deploy the tried and true dreamer bulk, which is a remnant and a relic from the bodybuilding.com forums, a dreamer bulk was aptly named for teenage and young lifters who were dreaming of getting huge and they just ate effectively garbage. Another term for it is just a dirty bulk. And that is probably the worst thing to do if you're afraid of fat gain. And that's probably rather self-explanatory, but I think it's really important that the deficit, or I'm sorry, the surplus is one that you maintain and try to keep small if you're trying to minimize fat gain. All right. So next question is from at ccpd, at ccpd. She asks, are there types of clients you avoid? And in all actuality, the question is really no. So I don't specialize and I don't

have a niche. I actually think that one of the biggest mistakes a lot of coaches tend to believe is that you have to have a niche. I think it's in many ways one of the biggest cop-outs in our industry. If you really understand the human body and you are really, really passionate about helping people succeed, I don't think having a niche is a really good thing to do. Yeah, if you want to train the highest level athletes, you need to really understand that. And you shouldn't have general population level education. But if you want to train the general population, yeah, you don't technically need to understand how to train high-level athletes, but it certainly helps. And one of the things that I have going for

me, not to toot my own horn, that most trainers simply don't, is I have like 15 to 20 certifications paired with eight years of experience training all different types of clients in person and virtually, from Mary Muffintop, Gen Pop moms, to collegiate athletes. I've trained and worked with people at all different fitness levels, and having a variety of different educational opportunities, certifications, internships, people that I connect with all the time, listening to different podcasts, reading hundreds of books, the countless hours I've put into educating myself on everything from nutrition to correct, quote unquote, corrective exercise to performance

enhancement, all of that stuff gets used at least fractionally with every single client. And it can be in the form of how I communicate to that client and educate that client. It can be in the client's actual nuts and bolts programming or nutrition prescription. But one way or another, all of that knowledge shows up. And I think the question like, hey, do you avoid certain types of clients is rooted in this idea that, hey, everybody has ideal clients that they like to train and there's some that you just turn away. But I am a firm believer that I should work with anybody whose goals are realistic and our personalities match. I already limit the number of clients I work with, but I don't limit who I work with. If somebody applies for coaching online or somebody reaches out in person, even though I'm

not really doing any more in-person coaching than the people who I already work with, it's a very intimate roster. But if somebody reaches out online and they have a goal and I think I can help them and our personalities match up, I wouldn't turn that person away so long as they fit within the confines of my relatively intimate roster. While I might prioritize a client who has a goal that I'm more potentially aligned with or excited about, there's really no clients that I turn away. If it's somebody who's really, really new to the coaching experience or doesn't necessarily know what to expect, maybe they have really unrealistic goals, that's when I might make recommendations that they perhaps focus on something else initially or work with somebody

else initially? Because the only real caveat I have when working with me is I want to work with people who are serious and who are going to see this thing through all the way to the end. To me, that's really, really important. And that makes a really, really big difference in my client success. But to answer the actual question, which is, are there any types of clients I avoid? I guess the only real answer is somebody who's not serious. There aren't a whole lot of people who I don't think I'm super qualified to work with. But if there's somebody who I think's goals aren't serious, or perhaps it's somebody who this is something that does happen semi-regularly, who has a lot of disordered eating patterns going on and they approach me for nutrition coaching, those are things that I tend to avoid. So next question comes from at Michaela Becker, and she asks, how do you know if you're eating too little?

Well, this is actually a really good question, and it happens more often than you think. Even though we live societally in a place where most people eat too much, in an effort to lose fat, a lot of people, particularly women, will end up eating too little. And I've seen this a lot in my coaching. And what you'll see in the science, in the literature, and what you can expect from people who are eating too little and also trying to perform doing something like resistance training is you'll generally see really poor recovery, dysregulated appetite, which would be like initially being starving and then eventually getting to a point where that appetite is completely irregular and erratic, and poor sleep.

So you see poor training, strange appetite, and poor sleep. And that shows up time and time again in the literature for people who are not eating well. But some of the other really interesting things that you'll see that, yes, they are in the literature, but they're not necessarily as prevalent, is you'll see the libido tank. A lot of women have come to me and just said, hey dude, straight up, I don't want to have sex. I just literally have no libido. And while everybody's libido is different when we're all healthy, it's not normal for at least the young women I know to have zero sexual interest. And so that's usually a red flag. If the libido was there and then all of a sudden the libido completely disappears, that's a big red flag. Another one

that you'll see, in addition to, like I said, poor sleep, poor performance, appetite dysregulation, is the feeling of being cold. Being cold is really, really abnormal for human beings with a normal level of body fat. Because remember, one of the primary functions of adipose tissue or fat tissue is actually organ protection, right? Padding and protection for our organs and thermoregulation or regulating heat. Fat is an insulator. That's why almost every animal that lives in the Arctic, at least mammals or in cold water, has a thick layer of fat that goes around the body called blubber. It actually also helps these heavier animals swim and stay buoyant because fat is actually quite buoyant.

And it's actually quite interesting. Part of the reason why whales die when they've beached themselves is because they no longer have that fat weight dissipated across water. And on land, that fat actually starts to crush them. Whereas in water, where the weight and the way that weight is distributed in gravity is a little bit different, they tend to be quite buoyant. So completely off topic there, but I did want to be a marine biologist at one point in my life, so I figured I would share that.

But if you're getting cold, you've lost or you have very abnormal sexual appetites or libidos, things are just off, you're not getting great sleep, your performance isn't markedly improving, you're definitely having dysregulated appetites or appetite, I should say. And then lastly, I think this is probably the most obvious one, you're losing weight very rapidly. For women, I would say more than two pounds a week. For men, more than three pounds a week. For normal weight individuals, for people who are very heavy, those numbers tend to be different. But those are some things you have to be on the lookout for.

And I don't think that losing a lot of weight all at once is a bad thing for people who are really overweight. I think that rapid fat loss is much healthier than being obese. But I think for people who are already quite thin, losing weight too quickly and restricting calories to a point where it's really inhibiting your quality of life from a performance, sexual standpoint, that's probably not the trade-off you want to make. 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, next question is from at bcortez96, and we're going to see if we can answer this in under a minute. She asks, what is the best way to figure out how much protein I should eat in a day? Well, for most people, if your goal is body composition, looking lean, having muscle, for most people, if your goal is body composition, looking lean, having muscle, and performing at a high level, you want to eat between 0.7 to 1 grams per pound of body weight. So take out your phone, type your body weight into your calculator, hit the multiplication button, it's the one that looks like an X, and multiply that by 0.7, 0.8, 0.9, or 1.0. Those are all acceptable ranges of protein intake if body composition

is the primary goal. This question is from at K Marie, and she asks, what are the best exercises for quad growth? Now, this is a relatively easy question to just throw two movements at and move away and say, oh, squats and leg extensions, get the hell out of here. But it's not really that simple, you see, because not everybody's body is built the same. And while squats are, for most people, a very good practical exercise that we have access to to grow our quads, and for literally everybody, they will work the quads to some degree, for literally everybody, they will work the quads to some degree. For taller people, squatting deep can be an issue. For people with limited ankle mobility, squatting deep and maintaining a vertical torso can be a little bit of an issue. And those are some of the properties

that make squats such an excellent exercise for developing the lower body. You see, as you descend into a squat, your knees bend. And the lower and lower you go, the more torque is put on the knee joint. And what ends up happening at the bottom of that squat, as long as your torso remains relatively vertical, is there isn't a whole hell of a lot you who tend to fall forward, usually for like every degree they're bending at the knee, they're also collapsing a little bit at the hip. And what ends up happening is you load up the glutes quite a bit as well as the hamstrings, the adductor magnus, some of the secondary hip extensors. And other muscles can end up coming to the party. And that can be mildly problematic if we're talking purely about hypertrophy. Now, leg extensions, on the other hand, are only really going to work your quads, and they're pretty damn excellent in terms of actually developing muscle, but getting a high degree of activation out of those tissues. I also quite like the leg press for developing the quadriceps. I do like to keep the feet a little bit lower on the platform if you're talking purely hypertrophy. Bulgarian split squats and walking lunges are tremendous. I know we talked about them earlier with regards to developing glutes, but to develop the quads, much in the same way the musculature we use in a squat is largely determined by how we

are built, our variances in mobility, our variances of bar position, we can manipulate the position of our body doing those exercises to better highlight the quads than the glutes. So to hit the glutes with the walking lunge, we want a longer stride. And to hit the quadriceps, the four muscles on the front of our thighs, with the walking lunge, we want a shorter stride. To hit the glutes, the Bulgarian split squat, we generally want to lean a little bit more forward into the movement and sit back, loading up the hip, pushing pressure backward into the posterior leg. But to develop the quads, we want a more vertical torso, a vertical torso that allows us to get the most band out of our knee possible while minimally loading our glutes. Not to say that loading your glutes is bad, but if you really want to put some pressure into those quads, pressure is not the

right term, tension is the right term. If you really want to put some tension into those quads, that's one of the best ways you can go about doing it. Now, like I said, I love leg extensions, but many of us don't have access to that stuff at home. So if you're training from home, one of the things you can do is any squat variation and elevating your heels. So putting a wedge or a plate or standing on top of something stable

and elevating your heels a little bit is one of the best ways to increase quad activation on certain movements. The reason for this is we get greater forward knee travel when we elevate our heels, and the more the knee travels forward, going back to that physics example I gave earlier, the more torque we put on that knee joint, the more recruitment we will probably get from those quadriceps. Additionally, elevating the heels tends to increase the range of motion people get when squatting. This is why many weightlifters wear

squat-specific shoes. The only thing these shoes do, other than any other flat-soled shoe, that makes them quote-unquote squat shoes is they include a heel. And they usually have a wooden bottom or composite bottom that's exceptionally hard. But that little heel not only increases forward knee travel, but it does so by creating what I like to call artificial ankle mobility. You see, it elevates the heel and allows for greater forward knee travel by lessening the demand and the tightness in the posterior aspect of the leg. There's less likelihood of tight ankle tissue grabbing hold when the heels are elevated. So if you are working out from home or you just want to grow your quads at the gym,

incorporating some heel elevated work tends to work really well. The exercise I like best for this is higher repetition between 12 to 15 dumbbell or kettlebell loaded heel elevated goblet squats. These high volume sets can develop quite a bit of metabolic stress, but they're also really, really demanding. And I don't love low rep goblet squats just because they seem like quite impractical in terms of getting a really heavy dumbbell up there. But moderate loads with relatively high repetitions tend to be a great way to train close to failure in a safe environment and really, really smash the quads. This question is from at Angelica and Angelica 9823. and she asks, what are my go-to stretches? And before I give you an answer, I think it's really important that we lay the foundation of everybody's mobility needs are

different. And so what stretches you should do should be exponentially more tailored to you, your body, and your goals than it should be to what some dude on his podcast says he likes to do. But I will share with you some exercises that I, or some stretches and mobility exercises that I believe have been really influential on my training and that I have to integrate very regularly with many of my clients just due to some of the tissues that tend to get tight for the majority of people. And so let's first talk about what those tissues tend to be. So starting first with the lower body, the ankle tissue, like we talked about with the quad question like a minute ago,

tends to get quite tight. And I do like to do a stretch called the combat stretch, or just a static gastrocnemius calf stretch. Those, as silly and simple as they might sound, they tend to actually work really, really well for improving the training effect and getting better effect from things like squats and lunges. Moving up the chain, one of the muscles that tends to be really tight or hypertonic, have a lot of activity, are that quadriceps group. You've probably heard the term quad dominance and it gets thrown around a lot, but it tends to remain relatively true that people oftentimes have tight quads, and tight hamstrings are actually really common too. But I've found that tighter quadriceps, particularly the rectus femoris, as it's also a hip flexor,

can be a bit more problematic. So I'm a really big fan of a stretch called the couch stretch, as it stretches the whole quadriceps group, but particularly does a great job of stretching that rectus femoris. I'm a big fan of that. With regards to the hips, I like to focus a little bit less on stretching and a little bit more on active mobility exercises. While I like the 90-90 position for almost everybody for improving just passive hip stretch capability, active work from the 90-90 position like FRC pails and rails, FRC hip cars from a quadruped position on a 90-90 position, I went a little bit out of order, you would probably do cars first. 90-90 hip switches and bear sits are some of my favorite for the quadriceps. Now, another region of the

body that we need to have quite a bit of mobility moving up the chain is the thoracic spine. But it's actually interesting how the body is constructed. And this is a little bit of a tangent, but bear with me. I promise you'll learn something. So every joint is effectively designed to be either mobile or stable. And starting with the ankle, it's quite interesting because the ankle requires a lot of mobility. But when you move up the chain to the knee joint, the knee joint requires a lot of stability. When you move up the chain again to the hips, we need a tremendous amount of mobility. When you move into the lumbar spine, we need a tremendous amount of stability. Moving then again into the thoracic spine, a region of the body that I was about to talk

about which is responsible for rotation, we need a lot of mobility. So there's almost a staggered effect of mobile joint, stable joint, mobile joint, stable joint, and that's what gives the human body all of its capabilities to move in the various ways that it does. But the thoracic spine is a region of the body that tends to require a lot of mobility. And many people lack, well, I don't want to say tremendous T-spine mobility, but they lack competent T-spine mobility. And to improve that, one of my favorite stretches is something called a thread the needle it tends to be a really really effective way of improving thoracic mobility and thoracic spine rotation and of all the stretches i do it has the most relaxing calming feeling it

feels awesome when you're doing it and it's one that I'll do even though I have a very rotational thoracic spine purely because I enjoy it. It feels really, really good. And so those are the ones that I like. What you end up doing and implementing for your routine with regards to stretching should be entirely tailored to your body. This is something I often work on with my clients who have really specific mobility restrictions, I will create a mobility or corrective exercise protocol designed to work in conjunction with the training program they have, but to improve their mobility as they go. My favorite mobility exercise, and I say this all the time, is resistance training. When you stretch, you're effectively lengthening muscle tissue. And whenever you go through a full range of motion exercise, there's a period of tissues

lengthening and tissues shortening. And that repetitious effect of lengthening and shortening, particularly with the introduction of external load from something like a dumbbell, barbell, kettlebell, even a machine, even body weight, has a really positive effect at building long-term mobility. body weight has a really positive effect at building long-term mobility. And stretching, while it is relaxing, is mostly passive and mostly generates flexibility, which is just one component. Flexibility plus control equals mobility. And that is what we should all be after. Hey, you guys, thank you so much for listening. That's going to wrap up the Q&A. Hey, you guys, thank you so much for listening.

That's going to wrap up the Q&A. You are all awesome. I so, so, so appreciate it. If you want to have your question featured on either the next Q&A episode or mailbag episode of the podcast, listen up. Here's how you do it. On at least one to two times a week, I'll drop a little question box on my Instagram where I'll answer questions on my Instagram story and Instagram live.

I'll even grab a few of story and Instagram live. I'll even grab a few of them and answer them right here on the podcast. Additionally, if you want to have a really thorough in-depth question answered, every once in a while I will do a mailbag episode where I dive through my email and answer your questions that you ask at www.coachachedannymatringa.com slash podcast dash questions. You can find a quick link to that at my Instagram bio. For everybody who listened today, thank you so much for tuning in. It means the world to me.

If you could do me a huge favor, leave me a five-star rating and review on the iTunes store. That is how podcasts are found, and I'd love to get my podcast out there so I can help more people lead a fitness performance driven healthy life. And you guys have been an awesome part of that already leaving amazing reviews all the time. So if you're a new listener, or you just haven't left me a review, that makes a huge difference. And if you don't have iTunes, just anytime an episode resonates, send it to somebody who you think would like to hear it

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