ANDREW HUBERMAN: Welcome
to the Huberman Lab podcast where we discuss science
and science-based tools for everyday life. [MUSIC PLAYING] I'm Andrew Huberman,
and I'm a professor of neurobiology
and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today we are discussing ways
to improve your fitness. In particular we are
going to discuss tools that you can incorporate
into your existing fitness routine that will
allow you to make significant improvement
without having to invest a lot of extra time.
Most all of the tools we
are going to discuss today were gleaned from the
6 episodes that we did with Dr. Andy Galpin. We provide a link to those
full episodes in the show note captions, of course. Now, those episodes
included a very large number of protocols, everything from
how to build a fitness, routine how to enhance recovery,
nutrition and supplementation, exercises and routines
aimed specifically at strength or
hypertrophy or endurance or building anaerobic capacity. What I've done is to
select key
protocols from those episodes that I myself have
started to incorporate into my existing fitness
routine and that I think will be especially
beneficial and frankly fun for you to incorporate
into your fitness routine. Now, a little bit
later in this episode, I review the key components
of any fitness program, that is the number and type of
cardiovascular training sessions and resistance
training sessions that are essential for
everyone to include as a template or a foundation
for thei
r overall fitness program. Now, a little bit
later in the episode, I will be sure to
review what are the essential components
of any fitness program, so the number and type of
resistance training sessions, the number and type of
cardiovascular training sessions, as well as
some of the elements of how those are
arranged to ensure proper and adequate
recovery between sessions so that you can continue
to make ongoing progress. However, the bulk of
today's discussion is going to focus on tools
that
you can use again very easily, very quickly, in
some cases even saving you time during your
fitness regimen in order to improve all aspects of
your fitness, your endurance, your muscular endurance,
your anaerobic capacity, your recovery, your
strength, your hypertrophy. And in describing these tools
to improve your fitness, it also provides an opportunity
for each and all of us to step back from our
existing fitness routine and ask whether or not
it's really checking off all the boxes that
are n
ecessary, as well as where we can be
more economical with our time and our efforts
in order to reach our specific goals related
to exercise and performance. So by the end of
today's episode, you can be sure that
you have at least one and as many as 12 tools
that you can incorporate into your existing
fitness routine, again, without adding much
additional time or effort that are sure to accelerates
your progress. Before we begin, I'd
like to emphasize that this podcast is separate
from my teachin
g and research roles at Stanford. It is however part of
my desire and effort to bring zero cost to
consumer information about science and
science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with
that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors
of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is LMNT. LMNT is an electrolyte drink
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to function properly you need electrolytes
in your system, and you need to
be well hydrated. There's a lot of research
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dehydrated, that your cognition suffers, your physical
performance suffers, and your sleep can also suffer. So getting adequate electrolytes
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interested, you can go to helixsleep.com/hurberman
for up to $350 off and two free pillows. Let's talk about tools
to improve your fitness. Before we do that,
however, I just want to briefly
remind everybody what constitutes a core or a
foundational fitness program. Now, what I'm about
to describe is not for the athlete that's
trying to just improve one aspect of fitness
or sports performance. So for instance, if
you are a powerlifter and your main goal is
to move more weight on the core
powerlifting movements, or if you are somebody
training for a marathon, it's likely that
your core fitness program will d
iffer
substantially from what I'm about to describe. However, the vast
majority of you are almost certainly
trying to have some level of cardiovascular fitness. So the ability perhaps
to run a mile or more, certainly to be able to
walk up a flight of stairs without getting winded,
you almost certainly want some degree of
strength, the ability to perhaps pick up a
heavy load of groceries and carry it in one arm
as you carry something else in the other arm. You want the ability
to help move furnit
ure. You want the ability certainly
to not injure yourself when performing daily
tasks, and perhaps you also want to be able
to go out and play a pickup game of basketball or
soccer, or to go out on a long hike with a family
without feeling so sore that you have to rest
in bed the next day. An optimal fitness
program of the sort that was covered in the optimal
fitness protocols episode that I did is therefore one
that checks off the major boxes that science tells us are
important for health span
and for lifespan,
and that can also help us improve various
aspects of performance, and improve various
aspects of aesthetics, whether it's fat loss or
muscle growth, if we choose. So without going into that
program in a lot of detail, the core elements
of it are that it includes at least 150
minutes and ideally more like 200 minutes per week
of so-called zone 2 cardio. I'll talk a little
bit more about zone 2 cardio a little bit
later in the episode. But zone 2 cardio is for,
those of you that
don't know, a type of
cardiovascular exercise that you can do
while maintaining a conversation
without getting winded but that if you were to
push a little bit harder, that you would find it hard
to complete your sentences. In general, zone 2
cardio is the sort that you can do while purely
nasal breathing, unless you need to talk, of course,
it's perfectly fine to talk while doing
zone 2 cardio. And again the
scientific research tells us that we should all be
getting at least 150 minutes and pr
obably more like 200
minutes of zone 2 cardio per week. Now, in addition to that, a
foundational or optimal fitness program for most people is
going to include anywhere from 2-4 cardiovascular
training sessions that are separate-- that's right--
separate from the zone 2 cardio, as well as 2-4
resistance or strength training, sometimes also aimed
at hypertrophy or muscle growth training sessions. Now, we have to acknowledge
that most people are probably not going to hit the upper
threshold of all
of those three things. Most people simply do not have
the time and/or discipline to get 200 minutes of zone
2 cardio per week, plus four resistance training
sessions, plus four cardiovascular training sessions
that are separate from the zone 2 cardio. As a consequence, the
optimal fitness program that I described in that
episode, and by the way, it's the program
that I've essentially followed for the last
30 years or more, includes three cardiovascular
training sessions. So one of longer durati
on
sort of typical endurance type training. This would be a long, slow
jog or a long hike one day per week, as well as a
shorter cardiovascular training session of about 25 to 30
minutes moving a bit faster, getting the heart
rate up a bit more, breathing a little
bit harder, as well as one very short cardiovascular
training session that would fall under the category
of high-intensity interval training, things like sprints,
which don't necessarily have to be done running. Could be done on a rowe
r. It could be done on
a bike, et cetera. So three cardiovascular
training sessions, as well as three resistance
training sessions. I want to acknowledge that
resistance training can be done with body weight. It can be done with
weights, with machines. I talked about the
differing virtues of one approach versus
another, but nonetheless, three resistance
training sessions. One focusing specifically
on leg training. One focused specifically
on torso training. That's right, chest,
shoulders, and ba
ck altogether, as well as some neck training
for important reasons that were mentioned
in that episode. And then a third
session that was aimed at somewhat smaller body
parts, biceps, triceps, calves, and some other small body
parts that tend to be neglected and that are important to
train if one wants to encourage muscular balance both
aesthetically and structurally to avoid injury and
have excellent posture. So those were the core elements
of that foundational fitness program. And I mentioned
then
and I'll mention again now that that
program is not a mandate. It is not an absolute
requirement for anyone to follow. It was simply meant as a
template from which people could evaluate their own
existing fitness program, perhaps modify it
somewhat or a lot, or if you were interested in
trying that specific fitness program, that you could do that. And we have provided a link
both to that episode in the show note captions, but we've
also provided a link to a table or chart
that describes tha
t foundational
fitness program. It provides examples of
different cardiovascular training and resistance
type training sessions. And it describes some potential
exercises and the rationale for those exercises,
and the rationale for selecting particular
repetition ranges and rest between sets. All of that information is
available completely zero cost. You don't even need to
sign up for anything. You simply go to the link that
we provided in the show note captions, and there's a
downloadable PDF t
here for you to explore. Now, in addition
to the solo episode that I did about optimal
fitness protocols, we did a six-episode
guest series with Dr. Andy Galpin, who
is a professor of physiology at Cal State Fullerton
and a world expert in all aspects of exercise
and muscle physiology. That episode described
a lot of the science, and in particular
science-backed tools for improving everything
from long-distance endurance to anaerobic capacity, strength,
hypertrophy, speed, power, recovery, nutri
tion,
supplementation, and ways to develop a year-long
program that will ensure you ongoing progress. In that series, Dr.
Andy Galpin provided an enormous amount of valuable
information, such that anyone and everyone, meaning
the person who's just interested in
starting a fitness program, or improving their
existing fitness program, or the elite athlete who
is interested in improving their sprint times,
or their jump height, or their powerlifting,
or their marathon time, could clearly benefit fr
om
some or all of the protocols that he described. Now, because that series is so
extensive in terms of its depth and breadth, again, providing
so much value at 0 cost thanks to Dr. Andy Galpin's
expertise, but at the same time because it might be a little
bit intimidating for many people out there to try and figure out
which protocols to incorporate into their existing
fitness regimen, I thought it would be fun
and very beneficial to talk about some of the key
tools that were described througho
ut that
series that one could consider incorporating into
their existing fitness routine now. So that's what this
episode is really about. It's about the tools
that I personally gleaned from those
discussions and that I found to be of tremendous
value in improving both my cardiovascular
fitness, my strength and hypertrophy
training, my recovery, and other aspects of my
overall fitness protocols. And when I say
beneficial, I mean in terms of improving my
cardiovascular fitness, improving my stren
gth
and hypertrophy training, and that have improved
the various metrics of fitness lifespan
and health span which include things like heart rate
variability, resting heart rate, blood pressure, VO2 max,
as well as some of the fitness metrics that were described
during that episode series with Dr. Andy Galpin,
such as performance metrics, the ability to
jump a certain distance, the ability to run
a certain speed or to run a certain
distance at a given speed, the ability to move
weights in good f
orm for a certain number
of repetitions. Again, all of the metrics
of performance and health are going to vary tremendously
from person to person depending on where
you're starting, how long you've been
training, and other aspects of your health. The tools described
in today's episode are designed for everybody. Again, these are
simple tools that you can put into your existing
routine that should really move the needle forward
in terms of improving your overall levels
of fitness and health. OK,
let's talk about the
tools to improve your fitness. The first tool is to
mesh your zone 2 cardio with your daily activities. So for those of you
that don't know, zone 2 cardio is
the type of movement that we typically call
cardio exercise that elevates your heart
rate somewhat, increases your
breathing somewhat, but that still allows
you to carry out a conversation without having
to pause or to gasp in order to complete your sentences. OK. So that's a general rule
of thumb for zone 2 cardio. Now
, for those of you that
use a fitness tracker, you can monitor whether or not
you are in zone 2 cardio very precisely. But if you're like me and you
don't use a fitness tracker, it's very easy to know if
you're in zone 2 cardio because again, it's that
level of output that puts you right below or somewhat
below the threshold where if you were to exert yourself
with any more intensity, that you wouldn't be able
to complete your sentences. Now, this could, of
course, be evaluated by jogging with s
omeone or
walking with someone or hiking with someone and carrying
out a conversation. If somebody isn't available,
you could, of course, do this by trying
to speak out loud and have a conversation
with yourself, or if you want another way
to monitor whether or not you're in zone 2 cardio
without having to use a fitness tracker, you could simply
ask yourself whether or not you are maintaining a level
of output that increases your heart rate
and your breathing but that allows you to
maintain pure
ly nasal breathing the entire time. Any of those approaches
will tell you more or less whether or not you're
in zone 2 cardio. Now, the scientific data
tell us that we should all be getting anywhere from 150
minutes to 200 minutes per week minimum of zone 2 cardio for
sake of cardiovascular health, cerebrovascular health, and
a number of other aspects of health that are important
essentially to everybody for health span and life span Now, many people
including myself, schedule zone 2 cardio into
their
weekly fitness regimen. So for me, I have
one day a week. For me it falls
on a Sunday where I go out for a jog that lasts
anywhere from 60 minutes to 90 minutes. It's a slow jog. I can maintain nasal
breathing the entire time or have a conversation
with somebody else or myself the entire
time if I like. Or sometimes it
consists of a hike by myself or with other people,
and sometimes those hikes extend anywhere from
an hour to four hours depending on the
circumstances, et cetera. I will me
ntion that
whenever possible, I try and do that once a week zone
2 cardio session out of doors because I like being in nature,
and I like getting sunlight, and I like getting fresh air. Now, during the discussion
with Dr. Andy Galpin, I explained how I
get my zone 2 cardio. And I acknowledged that
once-a-week session doesn't always allow me to
reach that 150-minute to 200-minute minimum threshold
of zone 2 cardio per week. Sometimes it does,
sometimes it doesn't. And his response to that
was ver
y reassuring. What he said was, look, if you
want to schedule zone 2 cardio and head out for a long
Sunday jog or hike, terrific. If you want to schedule a zone
2 cardio as two or more sessions on the treadmill or
on the bike, great. But that he doesn't
actually think of zone 2 cardio as exercise at all. And to that I gasped, and then
I was a little bit deflated. I thought, oh, great. I've been doing all
this zone 2 cardio, and you don't even
consider that exercise. And then what he said
was ver
y reassuring, and I think it's going to be
very reassuring to all of you. He said, first of
all, zone 2 cardio is absolutely critical to our
health for a number of reasons that I already mentioned. But in addition to that, zone
2 cardio does not impede, and in fact, can enhance our
other aspects of fitness. So for example, our
strength training, our hypertrophy training,
or any type of speed work, or other types of cardiovascular
training one might do. And that the best
way to get zone 2 cardio
is OK, if you want
to schedule it, schedule it as a session. But that to simply increase
the amount of walking and in particular, walking at
a rapid pace that one does, and to increase the
total amount of movement that one's getting
throughout the week. So taking groceries in and
out of the grocery store, running around with the kids,
taking a walk with a coworker while having a work discussion,
taking your calls for work while pacing in the
office or going outside, what he impressed on me
is th
at zone 2 cardio can be meshed throughout
the daily activities that I and everybody else
generally have to do. And this was of great relief
to me because I as many of you are, I'm extremely busy. I don't have time to schedule
in more cardio per week, or at least I don't see
the way I could do that without reducing the amount
of sleep that I'm getting, or without reducing the
amount of social connection that I'm getting with family
and friends, both of which are extremely important to
our mental
health and physical health. So the basic tool
here is yes, get 200 minutes per week
minimum of zone 2 cardio. And notice I said 200 minutes,
not 150 minutes to 200 minutes. I'm going to set
the higher threshold of 200 minutes per week
minimum of zone 2 cardio. But that you don't need
to schedule that as time on the treadmill. If you want to, great. But what was communicated to
me from Dr. Andy Galpin is that zone 2 cardio is
immensely beneficial, it's not going to
impede, and in fact, it's going
to improve other
aspects of fitness, and that it does not have
to impede and it in fact can improve other
aspects of our daily life like our ability to engage
socially, our ability to have a great output at
work in whatever type of work you do. So the message is very simple,
get 200 minutes or more of zone 2 cardio per week. And the message is also
a very reassuring one which is that zone 2
cardio can be spread throughout your
daily activities, and that if you're
doing enough of it, you probabl
y don't even have to
count the total amount of zone 2 cardio that you're getting. If you simply make the
effort to move around a lot more during
your daily activities and to mesh that zone 2 cardio
with your daily activities, you're going to hit
that threshold of 200 minutes per week minimum. Now, that's a great
message for me because I'm already doing
the three resistance training workouts per week. I'm doing what now
I can just call the two other cardiovascular
training workouts per week becau
se now I don't even count
that long Sunday jog or Sunday hike as exercise. I just consider that movement
out of doors on the weekend. And in doing so, it's also
allowed me to really enjoy that a lot more. There's something about
considering something a fitness training program that
shifts it from just recreation and enjoying life to training. And I, of course, love training. I love training in the gym, and
I love training out of doors. I love running. I love lifting weights. I love all sorts of
physical training. I know many people do, I
know many people don't. But if one looks
at zone 2 cardio as just part of
their daily life, you're far more likely to get
that zone 2 cardio in and all the benefits that come with it. And you're also opening up time
for work for social engagements and to do and pay attention
to other aspects of fitness, which is what we're
going to talk about next. The second tool that I've
incorporated into my fitness regimen and that I believe
can be of great benefit
to frankly everybody is to
start including low repetition, pure strength work. Now, some of you may already
be doing low repetition, pure strength work. But I believe that
most people don't. Most people who do
resistance training are using either
machines, or free weights, or some combination of
those, or perhaps they're using body weight. And they tend to focus on
repetition ranges from about 5 and usually more like
6 repetitions out to about 10 and
perhaps 15 repetitions. Now, of course, doin
g resistance
training and repetition ranges of 5-15 reps
per set, provided it's done at
sufficient intensity, so either to failure or
close to failure, of course, in good form is
tremendously beneficial. It can help build strength. It can enhance hypertrophy. There is tremendous value to
training in those repetition ranges. But when I sat down
with Dr. Andy Galpin to discuss resistance
training, specifically, he made it very clear that
at least for some portion of one's yearly training cycle. So
perhaps eight weeks or
10 weeks, or in the case that I adopted 12 weeks,
there is tremendous benefit to training in the 3 to 5
repetition range and maybe even lower. So the second tool of
training specifically for strength in the 3
to 5 repetition range is something that I started to
incorporate after I sat down to record that series. And I'll just tell you
a few of the benefits that I've experienced,
and then I'll tell you the specific
protocol that makes it very easy to do this. The most obvi
ous benefit to me
was that I got much stronger. And that that strength
persisted such that when I went back to using
higher repetition ranges, so typically I train
with weights or machines in the 6 to 10 repetition range,
sometimes a little higher, sometimes a little lower. But never before
had I specifically trained in the 3 to
5 repetition range exclusively for a period
of 10 to 12 weeks. And when I did that, I, of
course, gained strength. But that strength
stayed with me such that when I retu
rned to
higher repetition ranges, I could use more weight in
good form, and that, of course, enhanced strength and
hypertrophy further. In addition, there was another
effect that was at least to me very unexpected, which was
that my cardiovascular training improved significantly. Now, why would this be? Because typically a
3 to 5 repetition set does not elevate the
heart rate for long enough that you would consider it
cardiovascular training. And of course, the rest
periods between those sets is
pretty long as well. So even if heart rate goes
up during those heavy sets, it's going to go down during
those long 3 to 5 minute rest periods between those sets. But what I noticed was that my
overall posture and my ability to maintain
cardiovascular output while using good running
form or good rowing form was also vastly improved. And the logical interpretation
of why that would be is simply that the
muscles got stronger, and those same muscles
are being incorporated into the cardiovascular--
let's call it endurance work that I'm doing on other days. And therefore, I can carry out
those cardiovascular training sessions in better form
for longer periods of time. I actually felt much stronger
during my cardiovascular training as I got much stronger
moving these heavier weight loads for low repetition sets. And then the third specific
benefit that I noticed is that when training heavy
for 3 to 5 repetitions per set, I didn't get sore. And this to me was
an incredible benefit because ty
pically when I
train in the 6 repetition to 15 repetition
range and I take those sets to failure
or near failure, I do experience some
soreness the next day. Ordinarily that soreness
isn't so intense that it prevents
me from doing any of the other sorts of
workouts that I do. And for those of you
that have visited that foundational
fitness protocol, you know that I hit each major
and minor muscle group once per week directly as well
as once per week indirectly. That's the overall
structure of th
at program in order to allow
sufficient recovery between those resistance
training workouts to be able to make
continual progress. Now, by training in this
3 to 5 repetition range that Dr. Andy
Galpin suggested, I was able to improve
my strength, improve my cardiovascular
output, reduce soreness. I also just felt better overall. I had a lot more energy after
those workouts than I typically do after my resistance
training sessions when I use higher
repetition ranges. There are just a number
of di
fferent things that made me feel, wow, this
is really a powerful protocol. And of course, moving
heavier weights in the gym feels good too. It feels good to get stronger. At least there's a positive
feedback loop there for me, and I think for most people. And I should also mention
that for those of you that are averse to doing heavier
resistance training in the 3 to 5 repetition range because
you fear that it will make you too big or too bulky, training
in the low repetition ranges is actually m
ore geared
towards increasing strength and is shifting away somewhat
from increasing hypertrophy or muscle size. So that's a great
benefit for those of you that want to be
strong and also want to maintain
cardiovascular fitness, but you don't want
to add muscular size. And of course, for all of you
that want to add muscular size, it's well established that
increasing your strength will allow you then
to return to patterns of hypertrophy
training that will allow you to use
heavier weights, and th
erefore induce
greater hypertrophy. So there are oh, so many reasons
to incorporate these strength training protocols. So the way that Dr.
Andy Galpin suggested one do it and was the
way that I did it is he used this 3 by 5 protocol. The 3 by 5 protocol is
very straightforward. It involves doing three to
five exercises per workout. OK. So if it's a workout for legs,
it's three to five exercises. If it's a workout for
some upper body muscle, it's three to five exercises. Three to five exercises f
or
3 to 5 sets per exercise, 3 to 5 repetitions per
set, and 3 to 5 minutes of rest between each set. In addition, he
emphasized that one can do those workouts three
to five times per week. Although, I'm going
to put an asterisk next to that last statement
because I found that I couldn't do the 3 by 5
protocol say for legs specifically three to
five times per week. I realize that might be
possible for some people, but I'm somebody who like
many of you out there, either doesn't have the time
or d
oesn't have the recovery capacity to train my legs
three to five times per week. Even though I acknowledge
that there are probably ways to do that would
still allow me to recover, it just simply starts to impede
into other areas of training. It starts to impede other areas
of life like work and family and sleep and all the rest. So what I did and what
I'm suggesting you try is for any existing resistance
training that you're doing, to take a period of 8 or
10 or ideally 12 weeks and do the vast
majority, if not
all of that resistance training in the lower repetition range
that's designed specifically to induce strength adaptations. And to not pay attention
to whether or not you're hitting that same muscle
group three to five times per week, rather if you
train your legs once or twice per week, to simply do all
of the work for your legs in that 3 to 5 repetition range. If you train an upper body
muscle or muscle groups, chest, shoulders, back
once per week or twice per week to just stay
within that 3 to 5 repetition range
for those work sets. Warm-ups can include
a few more reps. And then to adhere
to this three to five exercises, 3 to 5
sets per exercise, 3 to 5 repetitions per set, and
3 to 5 minutes between sets. Now, the one exception to
this that I incorporated was that for very
small muscle groups. So for instance, the rear
deltoids or for neck work, or for calf work to not rely
purely on 3 to 5 repetitions but maybe to work in
a range of anywhere from 5 to 8 repetitions
. So still fairly low
repetitions but not so low that it restricts you
to 3 to 5 repetitions. The reason for that is that I
and I think a lot of people out there find it hard to
fatigue those smaller muscle groups adequately with good
form when restricting oneself to those low repetitions. However, for big
compound movements like presses and squats and
deadlifts and glute ham raises and things of that sort, maybe
even leg extensions and leg curls, which are isolation
exercises, of course, to rea
lly restrict oneself to those
3 to 5 repetition ranges that take you to
failure or near failure. I listed off the benefits of
doing that that I experienced, and I'm confident
that you will also experience a lot of benefits. So just to remind you what
some of those benefits are, you get stronger,
which feels great. That occurs within
your weight workouts, but it also carries over to your
endurance training sessions. I also noticed
that when returning to higher repetitions
for resistance training,
so after 12 weeks shifting away
from 3 to 5 repetition ranges and going back to training
in the 6 to 10 repetition ranges mainly. Occasionally up to 12 or 15
but really mainly restricting to 6 to 10 repetitions that you
can move much heavier weights in good form, and thereby
induce more hypertrophy while still also continuing
to gain some strength. And another benefit was
again reduced soreness compared to when training
with higher repetition ranges and more
mental freshness, I guess the only
w
ay to describe it, when training in those
lower repetition ranges. I don't know about
you, but when I finish a really hard
hour-long resistance training session done in the 6
to 12 repetition range, there's a certain
type of mental fatigue that even if I eat
properly afterwards, even if I hydrate
properly, that it tends to sap a bit of my
mental energy later in the day. But that the training at
the 3 to 5 repetition range did just the opposite. It actually enhanced my
focus and my cognition, my
overall levels
of physical energy, which is great
because it allows you to do all the other
things that we're required to do throughout the day. And by the way,
it will also allow you to get more of
that zone 2 cardio. So if you want more details
on the 3 by 5 protocol, again, that's time stamped
in the relevant episode on strength and hypertrophy that
we did with Dr. Andy Galpin. I'll also provide a link to that
specific time stamp in the show note caption to this episode. I do want to point ou
t that
you don't just jump right into heavy sets of
3 to 5 repetitions, you need to warm up adequately. For some people that warm-up
will be higher repetition sets, so say 10 to 12 repetitions
with just the empty bar or a lightweight. And then adding a
little bit of weight and doing 8 repetitions
and maybe 6 repetitions, and then your work
sets as they're called of 3 to 5 repetitions. Or perhaps you're
like me and you prefer to do low
repetition warm-ups. So this was also something
that I discus
sed with Dr. Andy Galpin and that for me has made
a tremendous positive impact on all my resistance training,
regardless of whether or not it is low repetition
or high repetition. And that's to do a brief
warm set that is somewhere in the range of 6
to 8 repetitions, very light just to get
familiar with the movement. Then to do a second
warm-up set that includes some load on the bar or
the free weight or the machine. And then a second warm-up set-- again, this could be
free weights or machines t
hat incorporates
a bit more load but still keeps the repetitions
low so in the 4 to 6 repetition range. And then maybe,
especially if it's at the beginning of the workout
and my core body temperature isn't elevated yet,
I'll do a third warm-up. But that third warm up
which, of course, is going to be progressively
a little bit heavier than the first or
second warm-up, is still going to fall within
the low repetition range so just 2 to 4 repetitions. For me, including a
few more warm-up sets with
progressively heavier
weight on each warm up but still keeping the
total repetition count low, so somewhere in the
range of 2 to 6 repetitions, has been very beneficial
for improving my work output during the so-called
work sets regardless of whether or not I'm training
in the 3 to 5 repetition range or whether or not I'm
training in the 6 to 15 repetition range. I know for some people, this
might be kind of surprising, how is it that my work sets
are actually higher repetition than my warm-up s
ets? Or put differently,
how and why is it that my warm-up sets are lower
repetition than my work sets? And that's because I fall
into this category of people that tends to fatigue
pretty quickly when doing resistance training. So for me, keeping
the repetition count on any individual
warm up set pretty low has allowed me to really
improve my strength output and really improve my
strength and hypertrophy training when I shift to
the so-called work sets. So I already listed off a
number of import
ant documented benefits and benefits
that I've certainly experienced by incorporating
low repetition, pure strength work into
my yearly training cycle for periods of 8 to 12 weeks. In addition to that, during
my conversation with Dr. Andy Galpin, he said
something very important for everyone to
hear and understand. He said, when you look at the
data on aging and performance, in particular
muscular performance, you see some very interesting
patterns within the data. He said for instance, that
for
every year after age 40, there's a 1% drop in
muscle size that can be offset by resistance training. But that if you don't
do resistance training, that you won't offset. And during that
series, we also talked about the minimum
requirement for 6 and probably more
like 10 working sets per muscle group per week in
order to at least maintain muscle size, not just age
40 and beyond but even at younger ages. OK. So that's muscle size. 1% decrease per year unless
you do the right thing. And the right
thing is get 6
to 10 working sets per week in order to offset
that decrease. And if you train
properly for hypertrophy, yes, you can still increase
muscle size past age 40. In addition, he said
that there is a 3% to 5% reduction per year for every
year past age 40 in strength and power. Now, that's a very
important metric because what it's telling us is
that the drop off in strength and power is significantly
greater per each year after age 40 than is the
decrease in muscle size, telling us that
we
have to do something to offset that decrease
in strength and power. In addition, he mentioned that
for every year past age 40, there is an 8% to 10% decrease
in speed and in explosiveness. And so if one is interested
in maintaining speed of muscular movement
and explosiveness of muscular movement,
something that's perhaps important to a number
of you, one also has to incorporate training
specifically geared toward maintaining or improving
speed and explosiveness. Now, I like many people am
n
ot so interested in speed and explosiveness, I know
they have their utility, but I am interested in
maintaining muscle size over the course of my life,
perhaps even adding some muscle to a particular muscle groups. I'm also very interested in at
least maintaining and ideally even gaining some strength
in certain muscle groups throughout my entire lifespan. And that's not just for
performance reasons. That's also because we know
that maintaining or improving strength of our muscles
is very import
ant across the entire
lifespan but especially in the years spanning
from 40 until death, which I think for most people
falls somewhere between 50, 60, 70, or ideally, out into
the 80s and 90s or 100, right? That's what we're all seeking is
to die later in better health. And in order to do that, we have
to dedicate some very specific training protocols in order
to maintain or build strength. So to summarize, in addition to
all the positive reasons to do dedicated strength
training that I mentione
d before, it's highly recommended
that you do some dedicated strength training for the
purposes of offsetting the age-related decline in
strength that occurs again 3% to 5% per year
past age 40, which is a pretty significant decline. But the good news is
if you do the 3 to 5 protocol for say
12 weeks per year, and then you continue
to resistance train using other repetition ranges
geared towards hypertrophy and strength or perhaps
even muscular endurance, the good news is you'll
maintain your st
rength and perhaps even
build your strength, offsetting that natural decrease
that would otherwise occur. I'd like to take a quick
break and acknowledge one of our sponsors,
Athletic Greens. Athletic Greens now called AG1
is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that covers all of your
foundational nutritional needs. I've been taking Athletic
Greens since 2012, so I'm delighted that they're
sponsoring the podcast. The reason I started taking
Athletic Greens and the reason I still take Athletic Green
s
once or usually twice a day is that it gets
me the probiotics that I need for gut health. Our gut is very important. It's populated by
gut microbiota that communicate with the brain, the
immune system, and basically all the biological
systems of our body to strongly impact our
immediate and long term health. And those probiotics
and Athletic Greens are optimal and vital
for microbiotic health. In addition, Athletic
Greens contains a number of adaptogens,
vitamins, and minerals that make sure t
hat all of my
foundational nutritional needs are met, and it tastes great. If you'd like to try
Athletic Greens you can go to athleticgreens.com/huberman,
and they'll give you five free travel packs that make it really
easy to mix up Athletic Greens while you're on the road, in the
car, on the plane, et cetera. And they'll give you a year's
supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's
athleticgreens.com/huberman to get the five free travel
packs and the year supply of vitamin D3K2. The next tool I'm
ab
out to describe relates to your
cardiovascular training, and it's a tool that
can greatly improve your cardiovascular fitness
with a limited amount of time commitment. But that is not
to say it is easy. What I'm referring to is
the so-called Sugarcane. If you listened to the
series with Dr. Andy Galpin, you may recall our discussion
about the Sugarcane, which is so named after our
friend and expert trainer Kenny Kane. And it is a very efficient
yet somewhat brutal way to increase your
cardiovasc
ular output. So the Sugarcane is
the type of protocol that you would incorporate
once in the period of a week but certainly not every week. It's the kind of thing that you
might throw in once every two weeks or once every four
weeks as a replacement for your other high
intensity interval training. The Sugarcane involves
selecting some form of exercise that you can do at
high intensity safely. That, of course, will
differ between individuals. For some of you it will
be a stationary bike. For othe
rs of you, it
will be a road bike. For others of you,
it will be running. And for others of you,
it will be rowing. The exact form of
exercise is not important. What is important
is that you can generate a lot of intensity. So you're going to be doing some
sprint like work, although not all out sprints except
on the final round. I'll explain where all
this is going in a moment. But again, you need
to select a movement that you can do without injuring
yourself while still performing a movement at
high intensity. So for me that would
be running, for you it might be something else. The Sugarcane is pretty
straightforward in structure. It involves three rounds after
a brief warm-up, of course. So you're going to do 3
to 5 minutes of jogging or jumping jacks
or skipping rope, something to get your
core body temperature up so that you're prepared to
do the high-intensity work. And then there are only three
rounds of high-intensity work. And they go as the
following, in round 1, you're going
to take
2 minutes-- so you'll need to set a timer
for 2 minutes-- and you're going to go the
maximum distance that you can in that 2 minutes. So run the maximum distance that
you can for 2 minutes, or cycle the maximum distance that
you can for 2 minutes, or VersaClimber the
maximum distance that you can for 2 minutes. Whatever you
select, you're going to do that as far and
as fast as you can for the duration of 2 minutes. So depending on the
movement and depending on your level of
fitness, that
distance might be 400m, 600m,
800m, et cetera. Whatever distance you
travel in that 2 minutes, you are going to mark that
distance down in your mind, or in your phone, or
on a piece of paper. And then you're going
to rest 2 minutes. So 2 minutes of work
then rest 2 minutes. Then in round 2, you're going
to go the same distance that you did in round 1, and you're
going to take as much time as you need to do that
distance as fast as you can. So if you went 600m in 2
minutes for round 1, in round
2 you're going to
go 600m, and it's going to take you however
long it takes you. Chances are if you really did
the best you could in round 1, you were at maximum output
for the first 2 minutes, that in round 2 it's
going to take you longer than 2 minutes to travel
that equivalent distance. However, there is
the possibility that it will take you less time. But for most people, it's
going to take you more time. So staying with this example of
600m in 2 minutes on round 1, in round 2, you're
going
to go 600m, let's say it takes
you 2 minutes and 30s. You then are going to mark
down how long round 2 took you. So in this case, the example
is 2 minutes and 30s. Then you're going to
rest another 2 minutes. And then in round
3, you're going to go all out again
as fast and as safely as you can for the same duration
that you did in round 2. And your goal is to go at least
as far as you went in round 1. And if there's still
time left, you're going to continue to go all out
again as fast as you sa
fely can until the entire
duration is completed. So it's really just three
rounds with two rest periods in between round 1 and round 3. And then I highly recommend
that after round 3, that you do some sort
of dedicated cooldown. So instead of just flopping
on to the bench or the floor or the lawn, that you walk
around slowly until you recover your breathing. The reason I like the
sugarcane as a tool that one implements once
every say two to four weeks as a replacement for one's
typical high-inte
nsity interval training is several fold. First of all, if you
provide the right intensity in round 1 and
round 2 and round 3, it is sure to elevate your
heart rate substantially, and in doing so,
improve your VO2 max, which is correlated with all
sorts of important metrics related to health span,
performance, and life span. Second of all, it gamifies
things a little bit. It pits you against
yourself in the sense that if you go out at
maximum speed, again, performing a movement
that you can safel
y perform at maximum speed
in round 1, well, then you have something to compete
against in round 2 and round 3. And that makes the
high-intensity interval training, first of
all, very intense, but also it makes
it fun in a way that lets you forget just how
painful the whole thing is. The next tool to
improve your fitness is called exercise
snacks and as the name suggests this is a fun one
and was suggested by Dr. Andy Galpin as a way to either
enhance or maintain your fitness depending on
how yo
ur core or foundational fitness program is going. So when I say core I
don't mean your abs. I mean whether or not you're
getting your regular cardio and your regular
resistance training if you were to add one or
several of these exercise snacks per week. It can further improve
things like VO2 max, muscular endurance, et cetera. I'll talk about
the specific snacks that you will be
doing in a moment. However, as Dr. Andy
Galpin also pointed out, there are times in
which we happen to not be followi
ng our foundational
fitness program either because work demands or family
demands or we're traveling. We're simply not keeping
up with our basic routine. And under those
conditions, exercise snacks are a terrific way to maintain
the fitness that you've already built and developed, and you
don't lose any ground in a week say where you get
particularly busy. Now, exercise snacks can take
on a variety of different forms. But for sake of
simplicity and clarity, today we're going to divide
them into
two major categories. The first category
are exercise snacks that are going to
improve or maintain your cardiovascular fitness,
so your ability to run or cycle or row some distance
say 12 minutes or longer. But keep in mind these exercise
snacks are very, very brief. They don't require that you do
them for 12 minutes or longer. What they are going to do is
either maintain or enhance the type of
endurance that allows you to continue in an activity
for 12 minutes or longer. The second category
of
exercise snack relates to muscular endurance. Muscular endurance is a very
important aspect of fitness. And even though some
people are already training for muscular
endurance, it's something that most people are
not doing enough training for. Muscular endurance
is your ability say to maintain a wall set
or to maintain a plank, or to do the maximum
number of push-ups that you can do in one session. The sort of drop to the floor
and give me as many push-ups as you possibly can type of
thing, or a
s many sit-ups as you can type of thing. Muscular endurance
translates to a number of other aspects of
fitness, and it's something that we should
all be working on. And again, many people just
don't make space for it in their regular routine. So now we have these two
categories of exercise snacks. One geared toward
enhancing or maintaining your cardiovascular
fitness as it translates to longer duration endurance
activities, so 12 minutes or longer. And then the other category
is purely muscular
endurance, which is essentially some
bout of exercise that's going to be fairly
brief, anywhere from a minute to 2 minutes but
certainly less than 12 minutes. OK, so let me give you
an example of an exercise snack for enhancing your
long-duration endurance, 12 minutes or longer. And this is the sort
of thing that if you are going to incorporate
into your routine, and I highly
recommend that you do, can essentially be done
any time with no warm-up. A good example of an
exercise snack of this type
would be to suddenly
stand up from your desk and to do 100 jumping jacks. Now, depending on
how fit you are and how fast you do
those jumping jacks and how wide and tall you
do those jumping jacks, meaning are you doing
these little things where your hands don't actually meet
and your hands like parting your legs just a
little bit, or are you doing full jumping jacks
where you're really jumping and setting
your feet out as wide as you
comfortably and safely can and then bring your
hands togethe
r, it could take you anywhere
from 30 seconds to 90 seconds. OK. So in the case of
jumping jacks, you may end up doing
this for 90 seconds. But the point is to simply
do 100 jumping jacks. Or if that takes too
long, you could even do just 25 or 50 jumping jacks. The point is that it's going
to get you moving your muscles. It's going to get
your heart rate up. Even if you're very, very fit if
you're doing these fast enough and you're doing them
with proper form, it's going to get
your heart rate
up. And then you're done. You can sit back
down to your desk or you can continue to
walk through the airport. Yes, I've done these
in the airport. Typically not while walking
toward my gate but at the gate. But occasionally I'm
feeling lethargic, or I haven't had the
opportunity to train that day, and perhaps I won't get
the opportunity to train, so I'll do something
like 100 jumping jacks while facing the
window so it feels a little less awkward facing
people while you're doing them. And of cou
rse, you don't
have to do jumping jacks. And equally effective
type of exercise snack is to find a stairwell
and to simply go up that stairwell
as fast as you safely can for 20 to 30 seconds. So perhaps just find the
bottom of a stairwell and go up that stairwell
as quickly as you can. And perhaps go down
as quickly as you can. And just keep doing that
for about 20 to 40 seconds, and then you're
essentially done. OK. You could also opt to
pick some distance away from your car in
the parking lot,
assuming you're not carrying
any heavy bags or anything, and simply run to your car. So 20 to 30 seconds of not
necessarily all out sprinting. You don't want to
injure yourself. Because again, this is
done without a warm-up. These exercise
snacks are designed to be inserted into your
day and into your week essentially at random. You could plan them if you want. But any time you feel inspired,
or perhaps any time you're feeling like you
don't want to do one, you could simply do one
of these exer
cise snacks. And of course, doing jumping
jacks, or running to your car, or taking the stairs
very quickly up and down, or just up and
then walking down, for instance, and doing a
few jumping jacks, things of that sort, of course,
can take on a near infinite number of different variations. So if you don't like
any of the variations that I just presented,
you can easily come up with something else. Again, the purpose of
these exercise snacks is to get your heart rate up. It's of course, to do thi
s
while not getting injured, and it is entirely compatible
with an existing exercise program. It in no way is going to impede
your performance in strength or hypertrophy or other
forms of long-form endurance or high-intensity
interval training, quite to the contrary. Everything we know about
these exercise snacks is that they enhance various
aspects of your physiology in ways that promote
both recovery and performance in your
other types of exercise and your other types
of athletic endeavors. So
no reason to think
that they are going to be problematic for your training. But of course, don't
trip, don't fall, don't undertake a
movement that puts you into a range of motion that has
hurting your back, your knee, or any other part of your body. Start off slowly
and find something that really works for you. So these are very easy. They take very little time. They're fun to be honest. And as was discussed in the
conversation with Dr. Andy Galpin, they're
also very effective. The second categ
ory
of exercise snack are the exercise snacks that
enhance muscular endurance. So muscular endurance
is the type of endurance that allows you to
maintain a fixed position for some period of time usually
somewhere between 1 and 3 minutes. But these endurance
bouts are never going to last 12 or
more minutes, unless you are exceptionally
evolved in terms of your muscular
endurance abilities. What I'm talking about here
are things like planks, wall sits, maximum number of
push-ups, things of that so
rt. And this is an aspect
of fitness that translates to other
aspects of fitness in a very important way. And again, this was covered
in the exercise series with Dr. Andy Galpin. I don't want to go
into any of the details now because it was
all covered there. It's very easy to look up
because it's time stamped. But just being brief,
muscular endurance allows the buildup of more
microvascular supply to muscles and connective
tissue in a way that allows delivery and removal
of more nutrients and w
aste products. Now, I realize to the physios
things like nutrients and waste products is far too
broad a category, but what we're
talking about here is the ability to deliver
more fuel and oxygen and to remove waste
products of muscular effort, or to be more specific,
neuromuscular effort. This is a great
thing because it can help you enhance your
strength training, enhance your
hypertrophy training, enhance your long-distance
endurance and your middle distance and even your
short distance endur
ance. And these exercise snacks for
building muscular endurance are exceedingly easy to do. And you can even do them
while talking on the phone, especially if you're
using headphones, or if you have your
phone on speaker. A good example of an exercise
snack for muscular endurance would be a 30 to 60-second
or perhaps longer wall sit. So remember wall sits? Wall sits are as
the name suggests where you put your feet out
some distance from a wall. You squat down into
a seated position, but there's
no chair
there, and then you maintain that
seated position, and that is harder
to do over time. You could lean back against
the wall a little bit harder if you wanted to
gain some extra support and continue. But the idea here
is that you're going to go not necessarily
to muscular failure but to the point where you
can't continue to sit in that wall sit position. You could also simply do
this as an air squat down to the bottom position
where you're comfortable. And then you don't want
to rest dow
n there, and you want to maintain some
tension in your quadriceps and other muscles
of your lower body so that you're actively
trying to support yourself in the seated position but
without a seat below you. That can be done again while
on a speakerphone conversation, that can be done at
random throughout the day. You can just decide, OK, I'm
going to do a wall sit now, and I'm going to time myself. I'm going to see how
long I can do this for. Or you could decide
to do a plank. I've done this whi
le
on a phone call. Sorry if it was that
I was talking to, but I've put the
phone on speaker and just gotten into
a plank position, and then I'll just have the
conversation in the plank position. I don't fight to maintain that
plank position past the point where I could continue
to have a conversation. So again, this is
a type of exercise that one is trying
to incorporate into their daily routine. If you wanted to dedicate
a specific amount of time just to doing these
exercise snacks, you could.
But it's far more
reasonable to assume that people will incorporate
these into their daily routine more regularly if
you can incorporate it truly into the other
aspects your routine like work. You do this while watching
TV, or listening to a podcast. One form of muscular
endurance exercise snack that's really terrific and is a
bit of a challenge, that's fun is to just simply see how
many push-ups you can do. And we talked about proper
push-up form during the episode series with Dr. Andy Galpin,
but
here what we're talking about is chest all the
way to the ground so it touches the ground, then
pushing up until your arms are completely straight. That's one push-up. And then continuing in
piston-like fashion, meaning you're not
pausing at the top and taking a bunch of breaths. You're not going into a
plank position in other words but continuing to
do as many push-ups as you can to see
whether or not you can enhance that number over time. And in any case, just
to simply get your body work
ing to engage the muscles
of your chest, your shoulders, your triceps, and your
core, et cetera, and to do that every once in a while. So instead of needing somebody
to say drop and give me 20, just see whether or not
at some point, any point throughout the day, you can
get into a push-up position and do your maximum
number of push-ups, and then just mentally note
that number to yourself. Again, these exercise
snacks serve multiple roles. They're designed
to get you moving, to get your heart rat
e
going, to maintain or enhance your fitness in other
domains of fitness. And this is very important
to not take too much time out of your schedule. In fact, like zone
2 cardio, right, being the type of
movement that you're just going to do a lot throughout
the week carrying groceries, et cetera, as we
discussed earlier, these exercise
snacks are designed to be incorporated
into your daily life. And I must say that
having started doing these after recording the series
with Dr. Andy Galpin, I've
noticed two things. First of all, including
these exercise snacks at least once a week and
more like three to five times a week for me, so that's
one exercise snack done three to five times
per week has definitely correlated with
improvements in my fitness in other domains of fitness,
strength, hypertrophy, long-distance
endurance, et cetera. Now, I've changed a
number of other things as well as a consequence of that
series with Dr. Andy Galpin. So I can't say for sure that
it's the exercise sna
cks per se that are causing all
those positive shifts. I have to imagine that it's
not just the exercise snacks, but they've become an
important part of my routine and that relates to
the second point, which is that the exercise snacks
are to be fun and easy. And so I really enjoy
them, so much so that if I don't one
for couple of days, I start to crave
them a little bit like the other kind of snack. The next category of tool
to improve your fitness relates to breathing
or respiration. Now breat
hing and respiration
is an enormous topic in and of itself. In fact, I did an entire episode
on breathing and respiration, and this is a topic that my
laboratory works on extensively as it relates to anxiety
control and some other aspects of mental health, as well
as to physical performance. For today's discussion, I want
to just review a few tools that one can incorporate
both into workouts and around workouts
that can greatly enhance fitness and recovery. The first one is the
type of respirati
on tool that you use between
sets of exercise. And again here we're talking
about resistance training, but we could just
as easily be talking about rest between rounds of
say high-intensity interval training. So for instance, between
bouts of sprinting on the track or the bike or
the treadmill or the rower. A great pattern of breathing
to incorporate during rest between sets is
something that I've talked about before in
other contexts which is the physiological side. The physiological side is a
deep Inhale through the nose to maximally or near
maximally inflate your lungs, and then a second
very brief inhale, and it's necessarily brief
because your lungs are already pretty full, to maximally
inflate your lungs and to make sure that
any of the little sacs or the little
alveoli of your lungs that have collapsed during
the exercise exertion will reinflate. And then a long exhale
until lungs empty. So I'll demonstrate it right now
as I've done many times before. But if you haven't seen
it
or heard it before, it's two inhales followed
by an extended exhale. And it goes like this. [INHALE, EXHALE] You'll notice that the
inhales were through the nose and the exhale was
through the mouth. That's the ideal way to do
it for a number of reasons. Check out the episode that I
did on respiration physiology a.k.a. breathing if you want
more details on why that is. But two inhales through the
nose and a long extended exhale through the mouth, the so-called
physiological side not named by me
but rather named by
physiologists in the 1930 is as far as we know,
the fastest way to shift your nervous system from
so-called sympathetic drive to more parasympathetic
drive, from a state of greater alertness to
a state of greater calm. Now, the reason to do this
between sets of resistance training is that the more
that you can shift yourself from sympathetic drive to
parasympathetic drive, that is from alert to calm in
between sets, the more energy and focus you can devote to
exertion during
your work sets. So one way to do this that's
very convenient and very effective is to consider
the last repetition of your set, a physiological
sigh, which is not to say, OK, I want
to be very clear, which is not to
say that you should do the physiological
side during your set. In fact, I recommend
that you do not do that. But rather if you're doing
six repetitions of a given exercise and you, let's
say, fail on the sixth or you do that sixth repetition
and you're just close to failure because a
gain your
work set should be to failure or close to it most of the
time, then set down the weight, and then you're going to
do the next repetition as the physiological
sigh, meaning you're not going to do the movement. You're going to think of
doing a physiological sigh as the last repetition
of every set, not during the last repetition
of the resistance training movement, OK. So the physiological
sigh is something you do at the beginning
of the rest period immediately following a set. If you'd
rather think
about it that way because it's more
convenient than thinking about it as the last rep
of a set, be my guest. Whatever works for you. But what you'll quickly
find is that if you do a physiological sigh
right after completing your last repetition, you'll
calm down much more quickly, your heart rate will
come down more quickly, and you'll recover more
completely in whatever designated rest period
you've allowed yourself, whether or not it's
30 seconds, which would be very short frankly
, or
it's a 5-minute period of rest between sets. If you do one truly, just
one physiological sigh at the beginning
of the rest period, you are going to effectively
shift your nervous system in the direction you want it to
go during those rest periods. And of course, if you're
training hard during your work sets you run zero
risk whatsoever of feeling so calm
that you don't feel motivated to do your next set. I promise you that it will
allow you to relax more at the beginning
of the rest period
than you ordinarily would, to
shift into a state of rest. There are differing opinions
about whether or not you should walk around or stay
still during your rest periods. I like to walk around a
bit and stay standing. I'm not one of these
people that collapses into a C-shape on the
bench in between sets. I like to stand up and breathe
normally and walk around, drink a little water, et cetera. In any case, doing
a physiological side the beginning of
each rest interval between work sets of
resista
nce training is a very effective
way to enhance your focus and your output
during your work sets. Now, the last respiration
tool to improve your fitness is again a tool gleaned from
the discussion with Dr. Andy Galpin, and that's
to include a 3 to 5 minute period at the end
of every single workout. So it doesn't matter if
it's high-intensity interval training, or it's
resistance training, or it's a long run of some sort,
at the end of every workout, to take 3 to 5 minutes, so
you'll want to set
a timer, and to do some form of
parasympathetic, that is calming promoting
breathing in order to shift your nervous system
from a state of heightened alertness and output
into a state of recovery. Because as you all
well know by now, you get fitter not
during your workouts but rather after your
workouts, in between workouts. So you stimulate the
adaptation during a workout, but you get the adaptation,
you get the actual improvement in between workouts. And a common mistake that
many people make,
and I made this mistake for years,
was to finish a great workout, and then you're
texting on your phone, or you're talking on the
phone, or you're driving home. It's certainly not as intense as
the workout that you just did. Maybe you're even feeling really
calm from a nice long jog, or you had a particularly
good workout that day and you're feeling really happy. So you're enjoying the
high, so to speak, well, when you do 3 to 5 minutes
of what's often called down regulation breathing
after a w
orkout, it allows you to
recover and to induce the adaptation that
you've been after, the one that you actually trained
for much more quickly. I can't tell you
how many people I know who start to incorporate
this into their workouts, find that they recover far
better from their workouts, which might seem a
little bit surprising. Why would it be that just 3
to 5 minutes of some activity would enhance recovery
to such a great degree? And that's because
typically people don't bookend their workouts
. They finish their workouts,
and of course, they're not continuing to
lift weights or run. But they move about
their day in their life even if it's preparing a meal in
a way that the level of stress, and therefore, stress
hormones, things like cortisol, adrenaline, things
that by the way are excellent to elevate
during a workout, things like inflammatory
markers, which by the way, are great to enhance
during a workout. That actually happens
during a workout. You have a massive increase
in infla
mmatory markers, which might seem bad, but
all of those things are enhancing the adaptation
that you're seeking. But as soon as
those workouts end, you want to shift
into recovery mode. And this 3 to 5 minutes of
down regulation breathing is a terrific way to do that. There are a couple of
different patterns of breathing that will work best, but all
of them emphasize exhales. OK. I want to repeat that, all
of them emphasize exhales. So for instance, you
could just choose slow, deliberate breathi
ng. How does that emphasize exhales? Well, ordinarily when we
breathe, we inhale actively and we exhale passively. Whenever we deliberately
breathe more slowly, we are actively exhaling. OK, so active exhales really
promote the calming response in brain and body. The other thing you could do
which many people are now doing is to do a repeated round
of physiological sighs. So the double inhale
through the nose, long exhale through the mouth
but repeated for say 3 minutes. That's another version.
The other thing you could do is
simply to notice your exhales and to emphasize your exhales,
make them longer and more vigorous than your inhales. Now, you don't want to turn this
into a breathwork session where you're-- [INHALE,EXHALE] --you're doing it Pranayama
or Kundalini breathing or something of that sort. The idea is to calm down. So any time you're
extending your exhales, you're actively
exhaling, you're trying to slow your breathing
down overall, you're going to shift yourself
in the r
ight direction. So rather than complicate
this type of tool, the best thing you can do is
just focus on those exhales, slow your breathing overall,
use physiological sighs if you want, or simply
sit in your vehicle, or if you have to
drive home while doing this extended exhale
type of down regulation. Ideally you would take
a couple of minutes and just shift your whole
system by not driving, closing your eyes and just sitting in
your car stationary, of course, don't drive with your eyes
closed,
or bike with your eyes closed. Just simply calm down,
extend your exhales and shift from the
workout to the recovery mode, which is where the
progress is going to arrive. I'd like to take a quick break
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InsideTracker plans. Again, that's
insidetracker.com/huberman to get 20% off. The next tool is to
improve your
fitness are psychological tools,
and they're really geared toward enhancing your
focus during your workout and separating or
segmenting your workouts from the other
parts of your day. Now, of course,
workouts are naturally segmented from the
other parts of your day, unless you're running
around all day long, or you're lifting weights or
other heavy objects all day long. But one of the more
attractive tools that was presented during
the series with Dr. Galpin that I adopted and found
to be really
effective is this concept of the line. The line is this concept that
you have a physical location, say at the entrance to a gym
or at the start of your run or your bike or maybe it's
around the stationary exercise device that you use for which
once you cross that line, you are all about business. OK. You're not socializing
or at least not too much. You don't want to
be rude to people, but you're really
focused on your workout. So this is especially
effective on days when you're a little
bit dis
tracted, or you didn't sleep that
well the night before, or maybe you've got something
going on in your mind, or you're in an
argument, or you're excited about something else. But if you care about
your fitness, which I hope everyone does, and
your goal during any workout is to stimulate
a particular type of physiological adaptation
strength, hypertrophy, long-distance
endurance, et cetera, and you also don't want to
get injured so that you can continue to train
for your entire life as regularly
as possible,
the concept of the line is fantastic
because what it does is it forces you
to compartmentalize the portion of your lesson
that comes before the workout and after the workout and also
to really enjoy your workouts. This is something that's
not often discussed, but nowadays with the
advent of smartphones, there's a lot of infiltration
of other types of communication and information while one is
supposed to be exercising. And so our life has become
far less compartmentalized than it u
sed to be before
the advent of smartphones. Now, of course,
smartphones are wonderful. They provide all sorts of
wonderful tools and benefits, and of course, I use one. And I'll talk about
how to incorporate the smartphone in
a very specific way to enhance your workouts
in just a moment. But the idea of a line
is you pick a location. It can change with each
workout, but ideally it would be at the threshold of
where the physical location to the workout begins. And once you cross that
line, you ar
e all business. You are taking care of business. Which is not to say that you
can't enjoy your workouts. In fact, you absolutely should. One of the best pieces of advice
that I ever got about fitness was given to me when
I was a teenager and I started lifting weights. And the person who was teaching
me how to do that said, one of the best
things that you can do and you absolutely should do
for your fitness now and forever is to learn to
enjoy training hard. And that really stuck with me. I reall
y do enjoy
training hard, but that was something that I
learned how to do over time. I took on the mentality
that I'm here by choice, I'm here for my own
good and my own fitness to enhance my life so I'm
going to enjoy training hard, I'm going to enjoy
training effectively. And of course, there are days
when I train a little less hard or I back off quite a bit. I even take rest
periods of a week every once in a while,
every say 12 to 16 weeks I'll take a week off and just
do some activities like
hiking and things of that sort. I talk to all about
extended layoffs, meaning a layoff of more than
two days during the episode that I did by myself, which is
the Optimal Fitness protocols episode. But in any case, learning to
train hard and enjoy training hard and really making
the workout something that is separate from the
rest of your life is one of the most
gratifying things that you can do to enhance
your overall fitness because it really teaches you
how to designate your mind and your bo
dy toward
this one specific set of goals while you are there
and to really enjoy the process because
fitness can be a truly enjoyable process even when
you are exerting yourself, especially hard. And for you
masochists out there, it can be, especially
because you're training hard that it feels so good. In any event, the key is to
set some sort of boundary and know that when you
cross into that boundary, you're training. And when you cross
out of that boundary, you're done training,
which also le
nds itself to more adequate recovery
and the decompression type breathing exercises that
we talked about before. I'm not going to tell
you whether or not you need to do the
down regulation breathing at the end of
your workout within the line or after you cross the line. That's up to you. I don't think one needs
to get that specific. Now, another tool that's
wonderfully effective not just for your workouts
but for all areas of your life is if you are going to bring
a smartphone to your workouts,
to set some boundaries
around what you're going to listen to and
do with that smartphone during your workouts. I see people texting. I see people doing selfies. I see people having phone calls. I see people, I presume,
listening to music or podcasts. Look, I am not the smartphone
police nor are you, and everyone has a right to
use their smartphone in the way that they choose
as best for them in order to distract
themselves or focus themselves or enrich their life. Look, it's a free world,
of cou
rse, more for some than for others,
but you can do what you want with your smartphone. However, if your goal is
to improve your fitness, one of the more powerful things
you can do with your smartphone is to decide before you cross
the line into your workout what you're going to listen to or
do with that phone or not. So for me, I like to
designate a playlist of music for that particular
workout, and then I just stick to that playlist. I might repeat songs
that I like a lot, or if someone talks t
o me
while the music is playing, I might go back and restart
a song if they distracted me, that sort of thing. Although, I do my best to not
get into too much social chit chat during workouts,
but I'm friendly, and it's nice when people
come over and say hello. I sometimes work out with
other people in which case I don't use headphones,
I don't use a smartphone. But setting a playlist or two,
designating a podcast or two, designating an audiobook
or two, whatever it is that you're going to
liste
n to really decide what that's going to be before
you do your workout. And the reason I say this is
that I observe a lot of people, and frankly, I've observed
myself under conditions where I'm suddenly in a
text communication, or I'm bouncing between
albums or between podcasts or between whatever it is
on the phone to the point where rest intervals aren't
being controlled well, to the point where
focus during sets becomes harder to achieve
at the beginning of a set because in between sets I was
focused on a conversation not on training. I'm a big believer in
making your exercise fun, making it accessible,
meaning not so expensive or
geographically difficult to achieve that you don't do it
or that it starts to interfere with other areas of life. This is really important. You want fitness to be blended
with the rest of your life, but you don't want it so blended
with the rest of your life that the rest of your life
starts to impede your efforts. Or and this happens quite
often for a lot
of people that workouts start to
take an hour and a half, two hours when they could easily
be completed in 45 minutes to an hour if you were just
more efficient with your time. And of course, you don't
need me to tell you this, but smartphones can be one of
the major bleeds on our focus and efficiency. In fact, it can cause
you to hemorrhage focus and efficiency. So what I'm
suggesting here is not throwing away your smartphone,
although, some people do benefit from just
leaving it in the car or
at home when
they are training. But rather to designate
podcasts, books, music playlists for that
particular workout and to just stick to those for
the duration of your workout. And once you cross
into the line, that's what you're listening
to and only that or nothing. And of course, once you
cross back over the line as you finish your
workout, you can decide to continue to
listen to the podcast, or continue to listen to the
audiobook, or to the music. That's up to you. Although, I highly
recomm
end that you do incorporate that
downregulation period of 3 to 5 minutes minimum. The last category of tools
to improve your fitness come from the discussions about
nutrition and supplementation and recovery in the series
with Dr. Andy Galpin. Now, the list of tools
I'm about to describe is not exhaustive,
meaning it doesn't even begin to come close to
the total number of tools that one could glean from the
discussion about nutrition and supplementation
that I had with Dr. Andy Galpin on this po
dcast, but
they are the major ones that are definitely worth knowing. And those include supplementing
with omega 3 fatty acids. Now, omega 3 fatty acids
are found of course in foods, things like
fatty fish and krill, of all things, certain
forms of algae, et cetera. But most people do not get
enough of so-called EPA form of omega 3s. And for that reason, I
and many other people choose to supplement with
a minimum of 1 gram per day and in some cases as
high as 2 grams per day of omega 3s in suppl
ement form. So typically one would
get to 1 to 2 grams of EPA by supplementing
their nutrition, their diet, that is, with fish oil
capsules or liquid fish oil. There are many different
sources of these. That was discussed
in an episode that I did with Dr. Rhonda Patrick. I find that it's
most cost efficient to get that 1 to 2 grams of
EPAs from liquid fish oil despite what you might
see on the internet. I don't have any
relationship whatsoever to a liquid fish oil company. You just want to make
sure that
you go with a reputable brand. I like the ones
that are flavored with lemon so that it offsets
the taste of fish oil, and I'll take a tablespoon
or two of that per day. And if I'm traveling
and even if I'm not I will often use
fish oil capsules, and there are a variety of
different sources of those as well. Getting sufficient
amounts of omega 3 has been shown to be
important for mood. So as a way to offset
depression but also for enhancing overall
mood that probably relates to the omeg
a 3s
effect on neurotransmission, not just for neuromodulators
like serotonin and dopamine but for all neurotransmission. And neurotransmission,
of course, is essential for
neuromuscular performance. And the omega 3s
have been implicated in reducing the
inflammation response, cardiovascular
health, et cetera. I realized that there is
some debate about omega 3s, but when I look at the bulk of
literature about the omega 3s, it's very clear
to me that getting 1 to 2 grams of EPA
form of omega 3 per
day is the right thing for me to do. And many others
find that as well. The second tool to
enhance your fitness under this category of
nutrition and supplementation is creatine. Now, again, creatine is not
just found in supplement form. It's also found, of course, in
foods, in particular red meat. However, the amount
of red meat that one would have to eat in order
to get the amount of creatine that one would start to see
a real performance enhancing effect is just far too high. You'd be ingesti
ng far too much
of other things in red meat that you wouldn't
want that much of. And for that reason, I
and many other people will take creatine daily. We now know there's no need
to so-called load creatinine in the old days as it were. So old days, by the way,
meaning mid '90s and 2000s, we were all told that
we had to load creatine, we had to take high-dose
creatine for four or five days and then you could back
off to a maintenance dose. Now it's very clear you can just
take a daily dose of cr
eatine. And that it really
doesn't matter when you take that creatine. You can take it post-workout
as many people do. You can take it preworkout. It really doesn't
seem to matter. I happen to take it postworkout
just as a matter of habit. But again, you can take
it any time of day. Now, the point I want
to make about creatine is one that's a bit different
than the other discussions out there. I have no issue
with the majority of what's discussed
about creatine out there, for instance, that
crea
tine monohydrate is the most effective form. Fortunately,
creatine monohydrate is also the least
expensive form of creatine that's sold out there. I see no evidence whatsoever
that the other forms of creatine are superior
to creatine monohydrate. But what you'll usually
hear is that taking 5 grams of creatine monohydrate
per day is ideal for everybody. And that advice is
simply not well-informed by the scientific literature. If you are a larger person,
so for instance I weigh 100kg so that's abo
ut 220
pounds, well, it turns out if you look
at the literature on creatine and
athletic performance, and if you look
at the literature on creatine and
cognitive performance, because as some of
you already know, creatine is a fuel or the
phosphocreatine system is a fuel system for
the brain as well. And if you look at the
studies on creatine, they almost always gauge
the amount of creatine to give an individual
based on their body weight. So you don't have to get
really specific about this, but
if you weigh, say,
185 pounds to 250 pounds, you can get away with
and probably should be taking 10 grams or
so of creatine per day, which is what I do. Whereas if you weigh less
than that, 5 grams or maybe even 3 grams is sufficient. Now, I discussed this with Dr.
Andy Galpin during that series, and one of the things
that I've started to do since the
closure of that series is to take more
creatine per day. So now I'm taking
10, sometimes even as much as 15 grams
per day of creatine. Again, this
is powdered
creatine monohydrate. My stomach tolerates
it very well, but frankly, I don't
tend to get stomach aches or gastric distress from
pretty much anything, unless it's some form
of food poisoning, which is exceedingly rare for me. So some people out there
find that creatine really disrupts their gut, and they
need to take it with food or they really need
to slowly and increase the amount of creatine that
they're taking each day. I find that I can put 10
even 15 grams of creatine into a w
hey protein
shake or into some water with a little bit
of lemon juice, just to make it taste a little
less chalky, drink that, and I don't have any
gastric distress from that. So you'll need to find
what works for you. But the point here is if
you're going to take creatine, you don't just want
to quote unquote, "take creatine one
scoop per day." You really want to adjust
the amount of creatine that you're ingesting
according to your body weight. And I would give you a very
specific formula of x
grams of creatine per kilogram
or pound of body weight, but believe it or not, no
such specific recommendation has ever been published in
the scientific literature or at least I couldn't find
it in a way that's consistent with all the other
papers, meaning you see a lot of variation. So what I'm talking about here
is if you weigh 185 pounds or so, OK, plus or minus 5
pounds out to about 250 pounds, 10 to 15g of creatine
per day is probably more appropriate for
you than is 5 grams, meaning it's g
oing to be
more effective for enhancing physical performance. And perhaps again, perhaps even
cognitive performance as well. And if you're somebody
who weighs 180 pounds down to say 130 pounds, 5
grams of creatine per day is probably sufficient. The point here is if you
are taking creatine, again, not everyone has
to take creatine. There's no law that says that
you have to take creatine. Some people don't like it. I know some people
fear it's going to make their hair fall out. We already talked
about
that in previous episodes and the lack of data
to support that idea. But I realize some
people steer away from creatine for
whatever reason. But if you decide that taking
creatine is right for you, adjust the total
amount of creatine that you take according
to your body weight. The next supplementation based
tool for enhancing your fitness is a Rhodiola rosea. Now, this very esoteric
sounding supplement is one that I learned about,
both from Dr. Lane Norton when he was a guest on this
podc
ast, expert in nutrition and frankly training as it
relates to resistance training, and from Dr. Andy Galpin. Rhodiola rosea is
a supplement that's gaining increasing attention
because it is what's called a cortisol modulator. It does not necessarily
suppress cortisol. It does not increase cortisol. It's a cortisol modulator. And frankly, the
mechanism by which Rhodiola rosea
modulates cortisol is still under investigation. I hope to do an episode
about it in the future or at least make it
part
of an episode because the hypothesized
mechanism that's starting to emerge is really
interesting as it relates to neurons in the brain that
control the stress response and glands in the body
like the adrenals that control the stress response
and that secrete cortisol. Regardless, there's a
growing body of research that has explored Rhodiola
rosea supplementation and one's subjective perception
of fatigue or output during high-intensity
training of various kinds, both resistance training as well
as running and endurance type training. So I started taking Rhodiola
rosea about six months ago in response to conversations
that I had again with Dr. Lane Norton and with Dr.
Andy Galpin, and it's a supplement that I take
before high-intensity workouts. So I don't take it before a
run because frankly my runs are either very long
and slow, or they're very brief like a high-intensity
interval training session. And I find those to be
pretty easy to recover from even though they
are very intense. I
might take a Rhodiola
rosea supplement before doing a 30-minute
hill run that's very intense. But typically, I only take
it about 10 to 15 minutes before any sort of
high-intensity resistance training session,
in particular my leg day which falls on day 2
of my exercise protocol, or the torso day, or the
small body parts day. Again, here I'm
referencing the way that I train across the week,
and you can find that training protocol as a downloadable
completely zero-cost if you like. But I realize
other people
are using different body part splits and different
combinations of resistance training and endurance training. The reason I mentioned
Rhodiola rosea in this episode is that I realized that while
some people might not yet be supplementing omega 3s,
they might not be supplementing creatine, there are many
of you who are already doing those things, and you're
looking for additional tools to give you an edge. So again, the Rhodiola
rosea would not fall into the category of
foundational
supplements. Certainly, get your nutrition
right, get your sleep right, get your sunlight. All the basics first
please before even thinking about any supplements. However, once you get into
the category of supplements that can enhance
fitness, Rhodiola rosea does seem to have
some good research to support it in
the context of lots of different forms of
high-intensity exercise. Now, I can't tell you whether
or not it's purely subjective or whether or not it's
objective and subjective, but my exp
erience has been
that when I take Rhodiola rosea I definitely notice
that I can exert myself harder without feeling
like I'm bringing myself to the brink of fatigue
either during the exertion or afterwards. In other words,
I feel like I can do more work without
feeling so exhausted, and I feel as if I'm
recovering from my workouts more quickly, in
particular across the day after my workouts. In fact, if I had to cite one
specific subjective effect that I've experienced
from taking Rhodiola rosea
before very high-intensity
workouts is that prior to taking it, I would
often find that 3 or 4 hours after the
workout having eaten a good meal, taking a shower,
et cetera, and I was tired. I'd have a real dip in energy. But now I notice that
I have a lot of energy throughout the day even after
these very high-intensity sessions in the early
part of the day. And frankly, I haven't
changed anything else about my supplementation
or my nutrition, at least nothing major. So I personally am
going to
continue to take Rhodiola rosea before
these high-intensity workouts. So for me, that's about two
or three times per week. However, if I forgot
to take Rhodiola rosea before a workout,
I have no reason to think that workout
would go much worse. This is a supplement that is
designed to give you an edge to be able to exert
more focus and intensity during your workouts with
less perceived exertion and to enhance your recovery. The typical dosage
of Rhodiola rosea that you'll find
in most supplemen
ts is 100 to 200 milligrams. And of course, any time you're
going to take a new supplement, you would be wise to figure
out the lowest effective dose from that supplement. That's just logic, right? Why spend more money
taking more of something that you don't need more
of if you could get away with taking less of it,
and it's just as effective maybe even more effective? So I typically will take
100 to 200 milligrams of Rhodiola rosea about 10 to
20 minutes before a workout. However, I've taken as
little as 100 milligrams on a consistent basis, and
frankly, I don't really experience much difference
whether I take 100mg or I take 200 milligrams
before a workout, so lately I've just defaulted
to taking 100 milligrams of Rhodiola rosea before
any high-intensity workout. Now, the final tool
that I want to review for improving your fitness comes
from the category of nutrition. I've done lots of
episodes about nutrition already on this podcast. We've done episodes about
intermittent fasting I
did a long interview
episode with Dr. Lane Norton where we discussed all the
ins and outs of nutrition as it relates to fat
loss, muscle gain, fitness in general,
lifestyle in general. So check out that episode where
you will learn his philosophy on nutrition, which frankly
is the one that I largely subscribe to. And of course, obeys the laws
of thermodynamics, calories in, calories out being
fundamentally important. But also gets into all sorts
of details about which sources of protein are most
effective and bioavailable, how much protein you can
incorporate into your muscles after training, et
cetera, all of that is included in that episode. With that said, the series on
exercise with Dr. Andy Galpin also included an
episode on nutrition. And while having the
discussion for that episode and then listening to
that episode again, I realized that while certainly
I've gotten a number of things right about my nutrition
across the years, there are a few areas where
I could probably do bett
er without much effort in
ways that could really enhance my fitness. And the thing that
I'm referring to is that for me my first
meal of the day laying somewhere around 11:00
AM maybe 12:00 noon. Sometimes I'll eat
an earlier breakfast, but most typically I hydrate,
caffeinate, and train in the morning, and then I eat
some time around 11:00 or 12:00. And then I eat my
last meal of the day sometime around 8:30 or 9:00. And as some of you already know,
I tend to organize my meals, such that meals
during
the early part of the day tend to lean more toward protein
and fibrous carbohydrates, so things like meat and salad,
or chicken and salad, fish and salad, and maybe a
little bit of starch. And the meals that I
eat later in the day tend to be more starch focused
and more vegetable focused or things like pasta, rice,
et cetera, later in the day because it helps me sleep. And the architecture
of all that is really about energy and focus. I find I can focus a bit
better and I have more energy
throughout the day when I have
my first meal at around 11:00 or 12:00, and I keep the
total amount of carbohydrates that I ingest during
the day moderate. Not low but moderate. Now, there is an
exception to that, which is if I do a
high-intensity resistance training session
early in the morning say train legs or train torso
or even small body parts early in the morning, then I make
sure to incorporate more starchy carbohydrates and some
fruit, some simple sugars as well into the
first meal of t
he day so that I can
replenish the glycogen that I depleted during those
high-intensity resistance training sessions. However, after talking
to Dr. Andy Galpin, I realized that I really
shouldn't worry about or be afraid of eating
something before training if I'm really hungry
in the morning. So what I'm
referring to here are the times in which I wake
up and I want to train, but I personally like to
train fasted and caffeinated. OK. Yes, I do recommend that people
delay their caffeine intake 90
to 120 minutes after
waking if and only if you have trouble
with an afternoon crash, real fatigue
in the afternoon, then it makes sense to
delay your caffeine 90 to 120 minutes after waking. However, the
exception to that is that if I'm going to
train early in the day, I do ingest water to hydrate
as well as electrolytes and caffeine prior to training. And sometimes that means
I'm drinking caffeine within 30 minutes or
60 minutes of waking. I've tried to be clear about
this in previous episodes,
but I think a number
of people have come to think that I
always delay my caffeine intake 90 to 120
minutes after waking, and that's simply not the case. If I'm going to train,
in particular if I'm going to do
high-intensity resistance training or a long run, I will
ingest caffeine sooner than 90 to 120 minutes after waking. And in addition to
that, yes, I tend to eat my first meal around
11:00 AM maybe 12:00 noon. But if I wake up
and I'm very hungry, I will eat a small meal
that includes typic
ally some protein and some fat,
so some Brazil nuts, maybe a couple of scoops
of whey protein would be typical for
me, or maybe even a little bit of oatmeal,
some whey protein, not a lot of food in my gut. But after talking to
Dr. Andy Galpin, what I learned was for some people
training fasted feels best. I would consider myself
one of those people. You may be somebody in
that category as well, or you might be
somebody who really feels as if you run
best, you resistance train best when you've ea
ten say
90 minutes or a couple of hours before you do that. There are basically
no specific rules as it relates to whether or not
you train fasted or train fed except in what you can handle
in terms of gastric distress. So you want to make food
choices according to that and try and avoid, of
course, gastric distress. But basically the change that
I've made is if I wake up and I'm hungry, I'll
eat a small meal, or if I want to work
out in the afternoon or I have to work
out in the afternoon and I
have lunch at say,
12:00 or 12:30 or 11:00 AM and the only opportunity
that I have to train is 1:00 PM or even 12:30,
I will go ahead and train. And that's a new thing for me. Typically, I try
to keep my meals at least three to four hours
prior to any training bout. And of course, if you're
sleeping all night, you're not eating, and then if
you wake up and you don't eat and you train in the
morning, that's certainly longer than three or four
hours unless you're sleeping very, very little frankl
y. So essentially what I'm
saying is figure out what works best for you. Do you prefer to
train fasted or fed? For some of you, you might
prefer fasted before cardio and fed before
resistance training. For some of you, it might
be fasted is always best. Again, I put myself
in that category. For some of you, it might
be fed is always best. Again, this is
highly individual. And that's another point
that I'm trying to make here, which is Dr. Galpin really
impressed upon me that there is no hard and
fast rule
about training fasted or fed. And, this is the second point,
that having some flexibility in whether or not you
can train fasted or fed allows you to incorporate
your fitness training sessions more readily
into a shifting schedule. And that's a really
overarching theme of everything we've been discussing
today, which is yes, it's wonderful and important
to have a core fitness program, something that
you're really striving to do each and every week. And for me, that's three
sessions of
cardio, three resistance
training sessions, and a day where I'm doing
thermal stress training, which is just fancy language for
deliberate cold and deliberate heat exposure. However, real life happens,
travel, work, illness, family, all those
sorts of things that can impinge on
an exercise schedule and make it less likely that one
would complete their workouts. So today we've been
discussing tools to improve your fitness which
are brief, easy to incorporate, scientifically
supported, and that a
re shown to improve the various
sorts of exercise adaptations and recovery that will
allow you to get the most progress from your schedule. So while the tools
that we discussed today relate to breathing,
they relate to nutrition, they relate to
supplementation, they relate to specific set and
rep patterns and cadences and rest periods,
et cetera, all of those specific recommendations
are within a larger container that I hope has become clear,
which is the best tools to improve your fitness are
t
he tools that are, of course, are going to be
effective in improving your cardiovascular and strength
and hypertrophy training, et cetera, whatever it
is that your goals are, but also tools that are going to
make it easier and more likely that you are going to engage
in your fitness program with enthusiasm, with
effort, and with focus. And as with any episode
of this podcast, I covered a lot of
information, and there are a lot of different tools
that one could incorporate. By no means do you nee
d
to incorporate them all. Although, if you choose
to, that's wonderful. Just even incorporating
one or two of them, say incorporating this notion
of the line and the exercise snacks, or adjusting
your level of flexibility as to whether or not you train
fasted or fed and the line, or trying a 12-week cycle of
purely training for strength when you do your
resistance training. But whether or not you pick
one tool or all the tools or somewhere in
between, the key thing is to actually implement them
. And I like to think that
during today's discussion provided a number
of tools, again, largely gleaned from the episode
series with Dr. Andy Galpin. And again, if you
haven't seen that series, that's linked in the
show note captions. Those episodes are long. There are six of them, but they
are a wealth of information of every aspect of fitness. During today's episode,
we're really just talking about the things
that you can and I do believe should bring to your
existing fitness program that can
really make a
positive difference without a lot of effort. Thank you for joining me
for today's discussion all about tools to
improve your fitness. If you're learning from
and/or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to
our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero-cost
way to support us. In addition, please
subscribe to the podcast on Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify
and Apple, you can leave us up to
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for me or comments about the podcast
or guests tha
t you'd like me to include on
the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the
comments section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. Please also check
out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and
throughout today's episode. That's the best way to
support this podcast. During today's episode and
on many previous episodes of the Huberman Lab podcast
we discussed supplements. While supplements aren't
necessary for everybody, many people derive tremendous
benefit from them from things like en
hancing sleep,
hormone support, and focus. The Huberman Lab podcast is
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supplements discussed on the Huberman Lab podcast,
please go to livemomentous spelled O-U-S, so
livemomentous.com/huberman. If you're not already
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Comments
The world's a better place with Hubberman in it. Simply is.
Hello Dr Huberman. It is ‘Guru Purnima’ in India today (3rd July, 2023). Guru means teacher in Hindi language. On this day, we thank our teachers for guiding us and showing us the right path. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for helping us to lead better lives through your continuous efforts in the field of science. You are indeed a Guru for me. A very Happy Guru Purnima Dr Andrew Huberman🙏🏻
I love how It’s always about quality of life when Andrew gives advice. Shows where his motivations are
Andrew Huberman is literally my number one go to guy for health and I thank him and for his team ❤
Absolutely essential knowledge for most people to stay healthy and functional for the rest of their lives. I listen to your podcasts all the time on the bus, on the tram, anywhere. I find them very helpful. Thank you for your contribution to the world!
Andrew is the man. Hope I can shake his hand and thank him for his priceless information and contributions to science some day.
This along with Dr. Galpin's series has been foundational in my exercise. I appreciate it very much, Dr. Huberman. You're truly changing lives.
I'm in my 50s and working every day to have a better life and I'm so grateful to dr. Huberman (and his guests) for sharing a profound and immensely articulate knowledge in a way that's bearable and affordable for everybody. I'm used to listen his podcast during my evening 5k fast walk and it's such a pleasure, every time.
This is the third 'cliff notes' episode I've listened to lately (the others being the sleep and fitness toolkits) and while I love the longer format deep dives and guest episodes, I'm so thankful for these episodes that concisely summarize the actionable steps for achieving lasting, positive health and fitness routines.
The number one scientific podcast on the internet. Experts in every field, there will never be another channel with the abundance of information presented clearly for everyone at no cost. Keep up the amazing work! I look forward to the weekly uploads.
Thank you for taking the time to prepare this summary of the series with Dr. Galpin. Massive thank you for dedicating so much of your time to your social media platforms/channels. Seeing how popular you have become makes me truly happy, you deserve all the recognition and praise.
the fact that these 'lectures' are free is unbelievable.
Bless you, Dr. Huberman. I skew on the older side and have consistently injured myself when starting an exercise/weight routine. Knees begin to suck after age 60 for some of us… would appreciate an episode that addresses ways to adapt activities for arthritic joints. Important to stay active, but not to the point of injury! You are an inspiration. And PS- I’ve been listening/exercising regularly for the past 9 months…INJURY FREE! (Knock on wood!)
Phew. I was hoping someone would summarize those Galpin episodes! and Andrew Delivers! 🔥
My exercise snack for this podcast is to squat anytime I hear ‘Dr. Andy Galpin’ Fun. Playful. Effective.
This is my favor Huberman episode so far, because it conveys a lot of useful information in a concise way. I don't usually have time to listen to full episodes. I hope Dr. Huberman will consider offering more episodes like this one that summarize content from many, longer episodes in a concise way. The links to the more detailed episodes are helpful for when I am interested in learning more.
Thank you, Huberman, for consistently bringing in experts and providing content that bridges the gap between science and practical application. I'm confident that this episode will offer valuable tools to supercharge our fitness journey and lead us to new heights of physical excellence. I'm excited to listen and implement the science-supported strategies shared in this episode to accelerate my fitness goals and achieve peak performance.
Recently got problems with falling asleep. However, several subsequent physiological sighs helped me to turn off anxious thought and fall asleep faster. Thank you Professor, for your intent to give us the best 0 cost tools for everyday life.
Can you make a podcast on diabete type 2 or how to get rid of high sugar in blood. What to eat or not. At a certain point of pre-diabete we do not know what to eat and how to stay healthy. Thank you for your podcasts. They are essential to all of us!
Thank you, Dr. Huberman. I love your channel because the content is backed by science. Grateful to you and your team. I absolutely loved the 6 part series with Dr. Galpin.🙏🏾