Fitness Toolkit: Protocol & Tools to Optimize Physical Health
01:55:16 Share

Welcome to the huberman lab podcast, where we discuss science and science space tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew huberman and am a professor neurobiology and optometry gy at stanford school of medicine. Today we are discussing fitness. Fitness, of course, is vitally important for Carter vascular health, for strength, for endurance, for lifespan, for health span.

I can think of anyone out there that wouldn't want to have healthy hormonal function, healthy cardio ashlar function to live a long time and to feel vital, that is, to have a long health span as well as a long lifespan. Fitness and fitness protocols are tremendous ly powerful for developing all of that. However, despite there being an enormous amount of information out there on the internet and in books and elsewhere, IT can be a bit overwhelming.

So today's episode is really designed to synthesize science space tools that we've covered on the podcast, some with expert guests like doctor and galpin or doctor Peter tea, or world renown movement specialist eo port toll or physiotherapy, strength and conditioning coach jeff cavalier. We've had all of them guessed on the podcast, and each and every one of them provided a wealth of knowledge in terms of the various things that you can do to optimize very specific or multiple aspects of fitness. Today, we're going to do something a little bit different than usual.

Typically on the huberman lab podcast, I offer mechanism up front or first, and then we talk about protocols that you can use that really lean on those science and science based mechanisms. Today, i'm going to describe a specific protocol that serves as a general template that anyone, in fact everyone, can use in order to maximize all aspects of fitness. So that includes enduring strength, flexibility, hyper chophel, aesthetic changes at seta.

However, this general framework can also be modified, that is customize to your particular needs. So if you're somebody who really wants to build more strength of their bigger muscles, you can change the protocol and the overall program according to that. And i'll talk about very specific ways to do that.

Or if you're somebody who really just wants to maintain strength, but you want to build endurance, will talk about that. And of course, we will cover real life issues, such as, should you train, if you are sleep deprived, what about food? When should you eat? What if you haven't eaten, then you're hungry.

Should you still train at set at sea? We're going to cover all of that again, in the context of this, what I would call foundational template of fitness. And the foundational template of fitness is something that I personally use. In fact, i've used IT for over three decades, aren't believe that that.

But I just recently turned forty seven, and I still use this basic protocol, or tempt across the week and modify IT according to what my particular goals are that year, that month, even that day, because i'd, like you live in the real world. And sometimes I been traveling or I missed work out. Yes, IT happen or life is an organized and exactly the way that I need to in order to have everything go according to the protocol that's on paper.

So we're going to discuss real world issues and work with the real world issues in order to get the most out of your fitness program. And again, by the end of today's program, I can assure you, you will have a template protocol that you can build up from, build out, change and modify, and that will really serve your fitness goals according to the science. And what peer reviewed studies and the experts that appeared on this podcast and other podcast really tell us is best and optimal for our fitness.

Before we dive into today's content about fitness and fitness protocols, I want to tell you about a brand new study that is very exciting and Frankly, very unusual as a study that was published out of the university of houston, examining a what I would call a micro exercise or micro movement, is a very small movement of a very small portion of your body. In fact, just one percent of your musculature that when it's performed continuously while seated, has at least with the report, are very dramatic positive changes in terms of blood sugar utilization and meta lisp. So the title of this study is a potent physiological method to magnify and sustained solid oxide metabolic, improves glucose and lipid regulation.

This study was publishing ee science, and I mentioned earlier, IT is getting a lot of attention, and it's very unusual. Without going into all the details of the study, let me just briefly give you a little bit of the background. First of all, you have a muscle called the solid.

Solid muscle is a more or less wide, flat muscle that sits beneath what most people think of is their caf, although it's part of the caf muscle. The other portion, the cafe is called the gastro nemea. The soil sits below that.

Now the solid muscle is a unique muscle because it's largely slow. Twitch muscle fibers is designed to be used continuously over and over again for stabilizing your body when you're standing up, right, for walking. This is a muscle that designed to contract over and over and over again.

In fact, you could walk all day on this muscle, and most likely you would not get sore. Do you probably done that and I did not get sore? In contrast, a muscle like your bye or your try step, if I would have you perform hundreds of thousands of repetitions, even with a very light weight, one pound wait or two pound weight, eventually IT would fatigue.

You would feel a sort of a burn. There is a very unusual set of muscles to use repeatedly. But the solid is an unusual muscle in that IT really is designed to be used continuously.

Now this study was focused on how people who sit a lot of the day and don't have the opportunity for a lot of physical movement, or maybe who don't even exercise at all, can improve their metabolism and glucose aliza without going into a deep dive about glue acute lizer. Because we've done the deep dive on this podcast episodes such as metabolism. Sara, you can look those up at hun lab docs.

There are all time stamp and available there. Anytime you eat, your blood sugar goes up to some extent. So your blood blue coast, as its call, goes up to some extent, and then insuing as a that used to essentially shap her own and sequester and use that blood blue coast is basically the ideas.

You don't want black lue coast to go too high. Hyper insulin ea is something associated with blood glucose is too high because inside goes up to essentially match the level of blood glucose. You don't also don't want to be hypo gas, you you don't want to have blood other that's too low and insulation involved in both regulating peaks and drops in bloodshed blood glue cos.

So we can basically say, and this is very simple, but we can basically say that you don't want black lucus to be elevated too much or for too long. That's not good. In fact, people who have diabetes because they don't make insuing people have type on diabetes, do not make insuing at all.

Their black, blue coast has is so high that they actually have to take insuing in order to regulate. Otherwise the blood goes can go so high that I can damage cells and damage organs that can even kill people. People have type two diabetes, are so called insulin in sensitive.

They make insulin, but the receptors to insulin are not sensitive to IT. And so they make more insulin than Normally would be made and isn't regulate properly. At sea, the take hole message about blood lue costs that you want your blood blue coast levels to go up when you eat, but not too high, you don't want them to say elevated for too long. This study looked at how people who are largely set interior at the sitting can increase the utilization, the clearance of glue cose from the bloodstream after eating. And they also looked at overall, for people get this, that we're using just that one percent of muscle, the solids, by doing what they call a solid push up.

So the solid push up can be described very simply as if you're sitting down with your nee bent at an approximately right angle like a square corner, and pushing up, as is a lifting your heel while pushing down on your toe and contracting the cafe muscle as IT were, and then lowering the heel and then lifting the heal again, lowering the heal, lifting the heal again. Each one of those is what they call a solid push up. This study had people continuously do solid pushups.

And they looked at things like blood lue socialization. They looked at metabolism and so on. Now, a couple of important things about this study before I tell you what they discovered, which was Frankly pretty maculate, almost hard to believe.

And yet I believe the data the data look um to be collected but quite well and there a lot of statistics and the study looks to be quite throw first of all that using equal number of male and fee male subjects there were a wide range of body mass in disease. okay. So this wasn't just super fit people or people that we're purely sectary not fit, used a wide variety of ages time of day that people who tended to walk a lot or not walk a lot.

They measured changes in metabolic and blood luc's utilization in people that had done these solid pushups while seated in the laboratory. And I must say, they have them do. These solar pushups are quite a long while continuously, so they had them do IT for as long as two hundred and seventy minutes total throughout the day.

So if you divide that, that's four and a half hours. You might say, well, four and half hours of lifting the heel and putting the heel down, lifting the heel, putting the heel down. That's a lot, but they didn't always do IT continuously. They had some breaks in their so this is the sort of thing that you could imagine you or other people could do while seated, while doing zooms or a while on calls or may be even while eating, doing that sort of thing.

Although i'm not suggested that you constantly be focusing on solid push up throughout your life, the point is that people who did the solid pushup experienced dramatic improvements in blood sugar regulation and in metabolic, despite the fact that the solid is just one percent of the total molecule or so. Here i'm going to read from the abstract about what they found. People who did these solid push up despite being a tiny muscle and using very little local energy.

In fact, they measured muscle like aging, the burn, or essentially the utilization of fuel within the muscle. And there was a very little utilization of fuel within the solid itself. And that's because the solid has this unique property of needing to basically keep you going all day, walking all day or moving all day.

What they saw was a large magnitude, for example, fifty two percent less postprandial, that's after a meal glucose excursion. So fifty two percent less increase in blood glue cos, and sixty percent six years less hyper insulin emea, to reduced levels of insulin. They also mache ously observe that despite this being again at a small.

Muscle, one percent of the total muscle mass, so very small oxidative use. They saw big improvements in systemic meta lic regulation. So this is interesting, and I think something that we should at least know about.

I'm not aware that anyone's replicated this study yet. I know there's a ton of excitement about this study in the popular press. And if the data turn out to hold up, which I like to imagine they will, I can understand why there's so much excitement.

What this means is that if you're somebody who cares about lugal cose regulation, you keep your metabolite running. Please don't stop exercising in the other ways that you exercise. But if you're somebody who wants to maximize your health, doing these solidest pushups fairly continuously while seated is going to be beneficial.

And in addition to that, I know that they're going to be people out there who principle might be injured or you're travelling and your stuck on a plane or you're in the classroom and your forced to study all day or take notes all day. You're just not getting enough opportunity to get those steps that you wanted take where there not ten thousand or fewer or more getting enough steps or movement. Maybe you don't have time to get out in new year run or maybe also running weight lifting and doing yoga classes and things of that sort, but you want to further improve your fitness, at least in terms of your meta la health.

This seems like a terrific, very low investment way to do IT certains zero cost IT does take a little bit attention. So you have to divert your attention from other things you're doing to make sure that you're still doing these solidly push PS. I'm sure that many of you are gonna a lot of detailed questions such as know how high did they lift the and did they contract the muscle very hard or not.

Couple of things about that. They did not have subjects really contract the muscle hard. They did measure the angle of heel race, and IT was anywhere from ten to fifteen degrees. So they didn't have to go wake way up on their tip toes or thinking of that sort in any event, two hundred and seventy minutes, four and a half hours of doing these solid pushup is a lot.

But by my read of the data and the rather significant or I was a very significant effects that they observed on blague cos regulation and metabolic and set a, seems to me that doing less would still be beneficial and that you don't necessarily have to do the full two hundred and seventy minutes in order to get the benefits that they observed more about. The study includes the fact that the benefits they observed were very long, lasting as long as two hours after a meal. They could still see this improved like Lucy ization, I don't know, because I wasn't able to find IT.

That's whether not they were doing the solo pushups. Wow, they were consuming blood sugar in this study. The point being that if you're somebody who cares about their fitness, this study is interesting because what that means is that, again, if you are forced to be a mobile or sitting longer than you would like feel stuck in a meeting or zoos or class or on a plane, that said, a or if you're simply trying to add a bit more fitness and metal bolic health to your overall region.

So is push ups, at least to me, you seem like a very low investment, simple, zero cost tool to improve your metamora health. For those of you that want to prove the study more detail, we will provide a link to this paper republishing I science in the show note caption before we begin, i'd like emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and researchers at stanford. IT is, however, part of my desired 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 sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is element. Element is an electorate drink with everything you need and nothing you don't.

That means plenty of salt, magnesium in patasse, this so called electronic and no sugar. Now, salt, magnesium and potash are critical to the function of all the cells in your body, in particular to the function of your nerve cells, also called neurons. In fact, in order for your neurons to function properly, all three electrical lights need to be present in the proper ratio.

And we now know that even slight reductions in electronic concentrations or dehydration of the body can lead to deficits. And cognitive and physical performance element contains a science back electronic light ratio of one thousand milligrams, that one gram of sodium, two hundred milligrams of potassium and sixty milligrams of magnesium. I typically drink element first thing in the morning when I wake up in order to hydrates my body and make sure I have enough electrical lites.

And while I do any kind of physical training and after physical training as well, especially if i've been sweating a lot, if you'd like to try element, you can go to drink element that's element t dot com s slash huberman to claim a free element sample pack with your purchase. Again, that drink element, element dot com slash huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by waking up, waking up as a meditation APP that includes hundreds of meditation programs, mindfulness trainings, yoga eja recessions and n sdr non sleep depressed protocols.

I started using the waking up up a few years ago because even though i've been doing regular meditation since my teens and I started doing yoga eja about a decade ago, my dad mentioned to me that he had found an APP turned out to be the waking up APP, which could teach you meditations of different durations, and that had a lot of different types of meditations to place the bringing body into different states. And that he liked IT very much. So I gave the waking up up a try, and I too found IT to be extremely useful, because sometimes I only have few minutes to meditate, other times have longer to meditate.

And indeed, I love the fact that I can explore different types of meditation to bring about different levels of understanding about consciousness, but also to place my brain body into lots of different kinds of states, depending on which meditation I do. I also love that the waking up up has lots of different types of yoga media sessions. Those you don't know, yogananda is a process of lying very still, but keeping an active mind is very different than most meditations.

And there is excEllent scientific data to show that yoga eja and something similar to IT called non sleep deep breath or nsd r, can greatly restore levels of cognitive and physical energy even, which is to a short ten minute session. If you'd like to try the waking up up, you can go to waking up dot com slash huberman and access a free thirty day trial. Again, that's waking up dot com slash huberman to access a free thirty day trial.

Let's talk about fitness and let's talk about how you can develop the optimal fitness protocols for you. That includes what to do each day of the week and your fitness protocol across the week and indeed across the month and the year and even year to year. When we had doctor and open on the podcast, he said something very important that we want to keep in mind today, which is concepts are few, methods are many, that is, there are an infinite number of different programs and exercises and schemes and different runs and burpy and pushes IT set up, set up that one can follow.

However, there are really just a few basic concepts of principles of muscle physiology, of cardiovascular function, of connective tissue function, that problem, or set the basis for the adaptations that we call fitness or that lead to fitness. So i'm gonna st. Those off now.

We can talk about a fitness protocol that's really aimed, mainly told, developing skill that's one, or speed, that's another, or power, which is speed, time, strength, or specifically strength, or hypocrisy, growth of muscles or endurance, such as muscular endurance. Muscular endurance is, for instance, your ability to stay in a plank position, or to do a wall, sit, sit on invisible chair against the wall, or other forms of insurance, like near pure aneroid c insurance. So a one minute sprint or less, or a one minute all out cycling on stationary bike, this sort of thing, or endurance that occurs in the kind of three to twelve minute total duration range.

So that might be springs or high intensity interval type training. IT could be all out swim. IT could be all out row. That's another form of insurance taps into different fuel systems, different aspects of muscle physiology, IT said a and then in dance, that last thirty minutes or more, which is typically what people think about when they think about endurance. But of course, the other forms of enduring matter.

So we have got skill, speed, power, strange hypocrisy, muscular in dance, and a obie, what I would call three to twelve minutes in dance, although IT goes by other names as well, and thirty minutes or more endurance type exercise and adaptations. Each and every one of these requires different principles, different concepts, in order to improve, say, your muscular strength through your hypocrisy or both. However, there's a general theme that sits beneath all adaptations leading to fitness.

And that's what we're really going to set down as the base layer, the foundation of everything we talk about today. And that's that we need to think about what are the modifiable variables. Again, i'm borrowing directly from the episode doctor in the open. He was the one that said modified able variables are the key thing to think about.

What are you going to modify? What are you going to change in order to increase one or some of the various things I listed off before, skill, speed, powers, strain, hypertrophy and dance setter, and some of the key concepts that emerged from that discussion, or that we need to think about progressive overall. Normally, when people hear about progressive overall, they think about adding more wait to a bar, picking up your done bells.

But that could also be progressive overload in the context of running up a hill of steeper incent, running a little bit faster, a little bit further and so on and so forth. Now as I promised earlier today, we are not going to drill into each and every one of the mechanisms that underlie the different adaptations that are going to develop speed and strength and endurance eeta because that was covered in the podcast with octane galpin and the other podcast with experts that I mentioned earlier. And we again, we will provide links to those podcast if you want to drill into those mechanisms.

Instead, what we are going to do is we're going to start with a program that essentially is designed for you to maximize all aspects of fitness to the extent that you can simultaneously maximize all aspects of fitness, but then to change or modify that protocol so that if you want to build up more, for instance, strength, then you want to just hold on to the endings you have. You don't want to build endurance, at least not in that week or that month, you can do that. Or if you want improve your endurance while maintaining your strength, you can do that and so on and so forth.

Most people, I do believe, would like a combination of strength and endurance and flexibility and maybe even hypocrisy, particularly for certain muscle groups that maybe are not as well developed as other muscle groups. They want to bring baLance to their physique, both for sake of atheism and for sake of health and for sake of, you know, general functioning, to maybe move to eliminate pain. The protocol that i'm going to describe really works as a foundational template t for that as well.

So let's drill into that foundational protocol. And i'll keep referring to IT is the foundational protocol, not because it's the one that I use, although IT is the one that I use and not because it's the one that we're talking about today, although it's someone we're talking about today, but because we need some general framework from which to build out the more specific protocols that will get into in a bit more detail later. So in this foundational protocol for fitness, what you'll notice is that on any one given day, you going to focus on one particular aspect of fitness, maybe its endurance, maybe its strength, maybe it's hypercharged y in particular, that might be hypocrisy for a particular muscle group or muscle groups.

That said, across the entire week is to bring fitness and different forms of fitness to all aspects of your body. So this particularly protocol begins on sunday, although that simply the day that I happened to begin the protocol. And again, this protocol is not important because it's the one that I follow.

I follow IT because IT is important. In other words, it's a protocol that's really Green from the scientific literature in the experts that is for you. So this fitness protocols really about you, I just may refer to IT as the one that I follow simply for ease of communication.

And for me, my week begins on sunday, so I do my very best to get a workout in on sunday. And for me, that workout is that of a endurance workout is designed to either maintain or increase my endurance. And the endurance type that are referring to is endurance of thirty minutes or more.

In fact, for me, the goal is always to get either sixty to seven, five minutes of jogging. So this would be so called the zone to cardio. People probably have heard of a zone to cardio, but if you haven't, that's OK zoo.

To cardio is something that you could measure with the heart rate monitor or other device, but you don't need to zone two. Cardio is the kind of cardiovascular exercise in which you are pushing yourself to move such that you're breathing faster than Normal, your heart is beating faster than Normal. However, you are still able to sustain a conversation.

But if you were to push yourself any harder, that is, move faster or go up a steep incline at the same rate you have to be at any one moment, you would lose that ability to speak. You would not be able to complete sentences. You would be out of breath.

You'd have to pause the sentence. Now it's near impossible, even with a heart rate monitor, to stay exactly in zone too, unless you're very, very skilled at that. So I don't obsess over that.

And in fact, I don't wear a heart rate monitor when I do this exercise. But for me, the goal is to head out on sunday and get sixty to seventy five minutes of jogging in zone too. Now of course, I like to jog.

With that does not mean that you have to jog. You could replace jogging with rowing on a rowing machine, or maybe you can rowing an actual boat. You have access to that, or cycling, or swimming, something that allows you continuous movement for sixty to seventy five minutes at the zone to thresh hold.

We talked about earlier for me, that can include some hills. And when I say hills, that could be very steep hills. But I simply slow my paste down in order to stay in that roughly zone to range.

Or I could be that there are more low grade hills and I might just slow down a little Better. I might even push myself a tiny bit that day. But really, I am just trying to build that long insurance. I'm trying to build up my capacity or maintain my capacity to go a long distance without fatigue. Now, some days, meaning some sunday, since I tend to do this almost always on sunday, although there are exceptions.

Instead of doing the sixty to seventy five minute jog, what i'll do is I will head out for a long hike that could be two and a half hours or three hours or maybe even a four, five hours hike. Sometimes it's very long, and i'll do that sometimes simply to mix up the routine because sometimes jogging and joining the same road gets boring to me. Ah I do enjoy running that something i've been doing for a very long time, but sometimes I just gets a little bit um tedious and I want to do something different also.

Sometimes I want to be social on sundays. I want to head out on a hike with my partner or I want to meet up with friends and hike with them, and so taking along hike on sunday as something that also could be quite social. And then I don't have to worry about also getting in my work out when heading out on a hyke win.

My partner going out to meet with friends or things of that sort. I will say that there is a specific tool or a specific change that you can make to this sunday long endurance or at least what I considered long for me is by no means of marathoner in iron mine but um this long, enduring training, and that's the use of a weight vest. So something that i've really started realizing more recently and more recently, I really mean within the last year.

So is I purchase one of these weight, this that um can be anywhere from ten to fifty pounds. What I use in the weight vest is is irrelevant but IT certainly changes the level of effort required when taking a higher even a walk. Now there's an additional benefit of the weight test, which is that if you are going out for a high or even for a walk for social reasons and you with somebody that's not quite at the same fitness level that you are, Frankly, it's a little bit rude to just keep walking ahead of them and running back or running ahead and running back.

Often times you really want to spend time with a person, you don't want them to feel as if they're holding you up. And so the weight that is a terrific way to get some additional work. Then as you'll find if you wear a weight vest, IT is additional work on, say, a shorter hike.

So maybe the person you're with only has time for an an hour long high or maybe they just don't have the fitness to do a two hour, three hour hike. So i'll throw on the weight vest and i'll head out for a walk with or hike with them or sometimes I go out on a long hike with the weight that myself. So again, the point of this for me sunday, although I could fall on any day for you workout, is really to build up that long form endings.

And this fits well with what doctor and y galpin and doctor Peter t. Referred to as the real need to get in some long and dance type work at some point, or even multiple points ghz. The week, for me, this long sunday jog of sixty to seventy five minutes, or long sunday hike, or waited walk, or waited hike, really accomplishes that goal and sometimes leads to a little bit of sourness um ticula ly my cabs, or if i'm wearing the weight vest, sometimes my my midsection will get sore because i'm trying to remain up right.

So I think IT also builds up some muscular endurance, not just cardiovascular endings, but again, throughout the entire time that i'm jogging or hiking, what i'm trying to get to is a place where I can feel that my pulse is definitely elevated. But it's not so elevated that have to stop because i'm out of breath and because I know some people out there might be really neurotic about this sort of thing. If you have to stop because you're out of breath, that doesn't mean that you blew the workout that you know aren't getting endurance.

Of course, you're getting benefits from IT. So i'm not absolutely neurotic about always staying exactly in that heart rate zone. I might stop and have a conversation for a moment if it's a longer hike, although I really try and keep moving and I try and push myself just a little bit further then where i'm exceedingly comfortable.

And so for me, doing this long sunday hike or jog really provides a foundation of base for endurance. But then the other endings, workouts that i'll described later and that take place later in the week can build on. Now as I mentioned earlier, we will get back to the mechanisms that this taps into and why this is so useful.

There are multiple benefits to doing these kinds of endurance type workout and zone two cardio. But by putting IT at the start of my week again, my week starts on sunday. I'm sure that regardless of how the rest of the goes that I got my endurance training in, and of course, i'm going to want to and I will do in dance training other days during the week.

But if something comes up or I happen to get sick or i'm really behind in terms of work and I can't get other workout in this sunday, long jog or hike really provides that fundamental. I can all see a foundation for cardiovascular itns and endurance that I can hang my head on and say, okay, i've got that one in the bag. And I can then look to other days of the week to focus on other aspects of fitness.

Now really important point to make about this sunday endurance work out is that allows you to check off a box, and that box is seventy five or so minutes of zone to cardio. Because, as you may have heard, either in this podger or from others out there, like doctor Peter ity at getting one hundred and eighty to two hundred minutes of zone two cardio per week has enormous positive effects on longevity and enormous positive effects on general health. Again, in terms of cardiovascular function would also met a olic fuel utilization also in terms of your muscular ure and your ability to use your body over long distances for long periods of time.

So well, IT doesn't complete all one hundred and eighty to two hundred minutes per week. IT certainly gets you a good distance. Pon intended. Toward that goal. Now I want to acknowledge that some people might be starting a fitness program, and so sixty to seventy five minutes of jogging might be too long, or a three hour waited vested hike, or some people might even do what's called a rock like you are a rock sack.

That might be too much, in which case certainly start with less and go on flat ground and go at the rate that allows you to get into zone to. But that is not excessively difficult for you. And then as you build up fitness, you can add time, or you can add weight through a weight vest, or if you don't want to buy a wait vest or can't afford one, as a simple solution to that, I should have a good antidote about that. One time I was heating out for a hike with a friend of mine.

He was a former team Operator, will never forget this and he said, oh yeah, i'll bring you um i'll bring you a sack and I thought he meant like a sack lunch, like he was going to bring lunch and I showed up and he busy give me a backpack that was loaded with a bunch of stuff and the backpack waited about forty pounds and when we took a hike so um I was thinking lunch, he was thinking, waited backpack and waited backpack even just any kind of strong sac that you can put over your shoulder or even Carry in your arms, it's going to work exceedingly well to build in some extra requirement for efforts. So you certainly have to purchase a wait best in order to ah in order to get the benefits of bringing additional weight along with you on these long cardiovascular events. But again, build up over time, you can add time, you can add weight.

And that's also a really nice feature of adding weight, which is at some point, your schedule might be such or you just don't really want to keep adding more and more and more time on this long insurance sunday. In this case, work out. In that case, at weight, you can also as you build up fitness, you can add speed to at your zone to and what zone two is won't shift.

But what work is required from you in order to get into zone to will shift, that is, as you get more and more fit, you'll have to move faster and or bring more weight in order to stay in the zone two. And that will simply tell you that you are indeed improving your endings. okay.

So then monday roles around, and I like most everyone else out there, I work on monday, I get right into my emails and preparation for podcast and running my laboratory, IT said. A however, I make sure that at some point on monday, and for me at some point is typically and ideally early in the morning. So 7 am or so I trained my legs on monday。 So that includes quarter ships, hamstrings and caps.

Why do I do that work out on monday? And what does that workout designed to do? Well, that workout is really designed to make sure that i'm either maintaining or building strength in my legs.

And this is not simply for aesthetic reasons. This is not simply to grow bigger caves or grow bigger quota eps and hamsters inks, although you can accomplish that as well, depending on how you train. Will talk about details or training. Reason for training legs on monday is several fold. First of all, they are the largest muscle groups of the body.

And by training your legs on monday, IT sets in motion a large number of metabolic processes that Carry you some distance, even through the whole week, in terms of elevating metabolic, in terms of amplifying certain hormonal events in your body at said a, that are really beneficial. In addition to that, i'm of the belief that the legs are the foundation of the body. And provided you can train legs safely, that training legs is vitally important, not just for strength of the legs, but also for strength of your entire body.

Again, some of that is through systemic hormonal effects, because if you're going to train the large muscle groups of your body under substantial loads, you will get systemic release of hormones, not just test astro, although certainly test astros, but also things like growth hormones. You get increases in all sorts of so called annabi c hormones that even if you're somebody who's not trying to increase muscle size, because I realized a lot of people are not trying to do that, these are hormones that shift your metabolic and your overall tension, strength and ligament strength and overall musculature into what I would call a strong foundation. So for me, monday is leg workout.

IT also just feels good to get the leg workout out of the way earlier in the week. And IT accomplishes another goal, which is that I sometimes will take one or two days off of a leg workout because they can be very intense and they are large muscle groups and not explain what I do on the off days. There not pure off days, they actually include some recovery type training, or even some all out training.

But by training legs on monday, i'm able to get what I considered the hardest strength and hyper TV workout out of the way, and again, set all those positive physiological effects in emotion for the entire week. The other thing is that no workout exist in isolation. What you do one day is going to be determined by what you did the previous.

And even though the previous day I may have taken a three hour weight vested hike, never are my legs so sore from that long, slow endurance work. Because IT is long and slow, then i'm unable to train legs. Contrast that with A A high intensity interval training work out, which comes later in the week, and my legs might be sore.

In fact, they might not even be recovered such that i'm able to do a real leg work. And when I say a real workout, i'll describe what that means in a moment. So legs come on monday.

And I think that for those of you that are using or are interested in using resistance training, I suggest getting your leg workout done early in the week and for those of you that have heard the the phrase, you know don't skip leg day um I will go a step further and they don't skip like day in fact make leg day your first day of strength high per for free training put IT on monday. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, athletic Greens. Athletic Greens, now called ag one, is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that covers all of your foundation tional nutritional needs.

I've been taking athletic Greens since two thousand and twelve, so i'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast. The reason I started taking athletic Greens in the reason I still take athletic Greens once or usually twice a day, is that IT gets to me the probiotics that I need for good health. Our god is very important, is populated by got microbiome 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 microbiology alth. In addition, athletic Greens contains a number of adaptations in vitamins and minerals that make sure that all of my foundational nutritional needs are met and IT tastes great. If you'd like to try athletic Greens, you can go to athletic Greens dot com slash huberman and theyll 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, at sea, and they'll give you a year supply of vitamin d 3k two。 Again, that's athletic Greenstock comes slash huberman en to get the five free travel packs in the supply of vitamin three k two.

okay. So now that we're talking about resistance training, the question is gone to come up about sets and reps in all of that business that was covered in a lot of detail on the podcast with dcr, andy alpin. And i'm going to get into some of that detail now, but i'm going to wait until I describe the entire set of workouts for the week before I go into even more detail because there's a way of what's called period zing that is changing the sets and reps a across the week.

And indeed, from month to month that's really optimal. But I don't want to make IT seem as if all of that just pertains to the leg workout. IT actually pertains to all of the resistance training.

So i'll just give you a couple of tea sers about the key principles of resistance training that I think are almost univerSally, if not univerSally, than generally accepted in the strength training in physiology community. And then later, i'll get back to some of the overarching principles that apply to all strength and hypertrophy workouts across the week, including the ones for the torso of the arms that set up. Okay, so legs fall on monday.

I should say that leg workout, like all resistance training workout for me, consist of about, again, i'm not neurotically attached this, but about ten minutes of warming up, and then about fifty five, zero to sixty minutes of real work. Now course, some of that is going to be rest between sets. But by real work, I mean really hard work, not necessarily to failure.

We'll talk about failure in a little bit, but hard work where i'm struggling to complete the final repetitions, if not going to, to failure to, to continue to move weight repetitions. And again, the entire work portion of that workout is about fifty to sixty minutes. why? Well past sixty minutes you start getting increases in court.

Is all that really impede recovery. And I personally am somebody that does not recover very well from high intensity of exercise. I realized, ed, that within the litter, IT is believed, and I think generally accepted, that when you stimulate muscle hyper trip here, strength increases.

IT impacts the nervous system. IT also causes things like protein synthesis that set up. There are number different forms of adaptation that occur to give you muscle strength and size changes. And these days people talk a lot about needing to stimulate muscle growth or muscle strain at least every forty eight hours.

But I can tell you that I recover out there slowly, and I benefit from working the same muscle group about twice per week with longer, or I should say, more days of rest in between those workouts. If I training legs on monday, believe IT or not, i'm only training legs on monday. I do not have a second leg workout during the week.

However, on friday, I do a high intensity interval training session that serves two purposes. One is that serves the purpose of trigger ing a certain type of endurance and getting my heart rate very, very high. And in addition to that, because of the way I do that, work out IT access a sort of supplement or a more mother intensity workout for.

Quarter steps, hamstrings and caves such that I at least never lose strength, in fact, generally build strength from one leg workout to the next, provided i'm doing things correctly. So what i'm not referring to is a kind of classic, uh, you know, super high intensity training once per week and then not actually training that muscle group again. For me, it's really training each muscle group twice per week, once directly and then once indirectly, either during another way training workout or during a cardio accused as a enduring training workout.

So again, legs, on monday, the workout is fifty to sixty minutes. After a brief form up, I generally pick two exercises for a muscle groups. Again, i'm doing caves, i'm doing quarter ships and i'm doing hamstrings.

You should pick the exercises that work for you. So that's why i'm actually not going to share which exercises I use. I'll give you a couple of suggestions about the ones I do use.

But really, exercise selection as docker and the glp and point IT out is a very important variable. And the key thing to emphasize for that variables that you need to be able to perform the movement safely. So I know they're a huge debate out there.

And people love to argue about whether not one can squat or dead lift for long periods of time or should or should not. Some people say you absolutely. I personally do not squat and do not dead lift.

I've actually never done much squatting or dead lifting and I know some people there are probably rolling their eyes, are switching the channel at this point. Um but I can say that for me, i've been able to achieve the strengthened hypertrophy goals that i've been seeking. Doing things like like extensions and hack squat or for hastings doing things like like girls and glue m raises or for cas doing standing and seated cafe es and so on.

I think a key principal that everyone should pay attention to is one that was taught to me by an excEllent strength coach years ago. And I still use this, and at least that works for me. For each muscle group, try and find an exercise in which you get that muscle into a waited stretch position.

So this would be for since the standing cafe, as you know, down the bottom waited and you're in in a deep stretch provided you're doing the the movement correctly as well as another exercise where you're getting contraction in the shorten position of the muscle. So for the hamstringing, that would be the leg curl for a the cavs, that would be exceeded crys or for the quarter eps. The the leg extension is you if the machine is designed right and you're doing IT correctly, the peak contraction is largely going to occur at at the leg's extended position.

But then another exercise for each muscle group that puts the muscle into more of a stretched or at least a larger range of motion or compound tight movement, but ideally where there are some stretch there. So I guess I will tell you what excise exercise I do for the quarter. Subs that can be leg hi squad are, I use high squad because I don't do free bar squad for safety reasons, and I like the high squad machine.

I'll do leg curls and glue ham raises perham strains and understanding cafe cases and see cafe cases for the cafs. Again, those are the movements that I use, because I can perform them safely in the repetition ranges and with the weights that are required for me to either maintainer build leg strength and cap strength. But you might decide that for you, dead lifts are absolutely essential and terrific, or squats, free bar squats are absolutely traffic or front in front squat.

I'm not here to tell you what exercises to do or not do. I am telling you that it's probably wise to at least consider doing at least two exercises s per muscle group, probably three maximum. If you ask me, you're doing your entire legs and caves in one day, but to think about doing one exercise where the muscles brought into that shorten peak contraction position, like like girls are like extensions or C D cavers.

And then another exercise for reach muscle group where there is more of a illegal and maybe even in a stretch on the muscle group. In fact, that's a principle that you'll hear me talk about later when I talk about training other muscle groups for strengthening trophy. So now you know approximately ten, how long to train.

You might be somebody who can get away with training for an hour a half, and that won't impede recovery. For me, that really starts to compete my recovery. Also, if i'm staying on task, that sixty minute limit really works well for me.

Do I occasionally train for seventy five minutes? Yes, because if i'm waiting for a peace of equipment, sometimes I have to just wait longer. So that happens.

But I really try and keep the total duration of the work out shorter. How many sets and reps and rest and nervous s without was covered by dr. Andy galin as well without getting into the total science here, a brief summary of how to structure that.

It's pretty clear that if you're going to do lower repetitions and heavy or weight, that you're going to want to do a bit more volume. I know that this spits in the face of what a lot of people think, but so if you're going to do five sets of five, that I would consider five repetitions low, low repetition range, heavy weight. And if you're going to train with higher repetitions, you can do fewer sets.

That certainly works for me. I generally follow a program where for about a month, so three to four weeks, I will do all my resistance training in the repetition range of about four to eight repetitions. So that's rather heavy.

A few more sets. So IT might be anywhere from three to four sets per exercise, again, still just two exercises and longer rest between sets anywhere from two minutes to maybe even in four minutes if it's really heavy network. And then for the next month, switch to repetition range that's closer to eight to twelve, maybe even in fifteen repetitions per set, but do fewer sets overall.

So maybe just two to three sets per exercises, again, just two exercises per muscle group typically, and shorts in the rest between sets, so that it's more in the ninety second, maybe in short of sixty seconds rest between sets, partially ally, ninety seconds about two minutes or two and a half minutes. So basic. It's one month heavier, the next month slightly lighter.

Although I wouldn't say light, I was a moderate weight and moderate reprint that tends to work well for me. IT also adheres to a principal that came up during the discussion, again, without any open, that for hypocrisy, you really can use repetition ranges anywhere from five to thirty three, zero ripped. But he emphasize changing the repetition ranges in order to offset boredom.

Frankly, I like to train, have you? I enjoy training in the four, eight range. However, I noticed that if I do that for more than four weeks in a row, and I don't switch over to training in the eight to twelve, maybe in fifteen repetition range for about a month, well then I can't make continuous progress.

I start actually lose ground. But by switching back and forth, I actually can make continuous progress at least across the year. So I hope that that principal or I should say that protocol um was communicated clearly. IT works very well, I assure you.

Does that mean that I never get ten repetitions on a week when i'm supposed to train the four, eight repetition range? No, occasionally i'll venture up into the ten repetition range, but I really try to cluster the low repetition work for about a month again, across all workout and all exercises, and the slightly higher out in a motor repetition work across to the next month. One thing that you'll know, distance we are talking about total fitness programing is that during the month where you are doing moderate repetitions, you'll notice that your endurance work will actually be facilitated.

And I do not think that's a quince. In fact, it's not a coincident. It's because when you are training very heavy or in the heavy your range lower repetitions at sea, you're tapping into different processes in those muscles.

So when you head out for that long sunday hike or as you'll soon here where as on, you're going to do high intensity international training, well, you'll notice is during certain months of wait training, when you're training more heavy, those workout will feel literally will feel different than they will during the months when you're doing moderate repetition work. I am not a competitive athlete. I'm not running races or try atlans like some of my friends.

I'm very impressed by them. I'm really just trying to get overall cardiovascular fitness, overall strength, overall hyperdrive phy where I need to maintain muscle size in eta, in muscle groups where i'm just trying to maintain. That's really my goal. So i'm not trying to optimize any of these workout for any one performance feature. But in a little bit, we will talk about how you can change various aspects, that is, variables of these protocols in order to say, for instance, really emphasize hypercharged y or really emphasize in dance.

Okay, so with what I will call a standard endurance workout done on sunday, I say standard because most people when they hear endurance, they think of the ability to endure to continue uh the repeated movement or exercise over some period time with that work out done on sunday and then with the leg workout done on monday, you can feel really good about how you're heading into the week. However, after training legs on monday, I experience that doing. Cardiff asked lar workouts the next day is either inefficient or at least doesn't really allow me to completely recover from my leg workout.

Now I realized that some people are going to immediately scoff at that. And in fact, there are really beautiful papers out there talking about how one can actually do a fair amount of cardiovascular exercise without interfering with their strength and speed and hyperdrive phy improvements and vice versa. In fact, there's a terrific review that was mentioned on the podcast with doctor and to open this is A A review that will put write a citing to um and a reference and a link to which is the review by a muran baggily which talks about whether others interference between strength and enduring workouts really interesting review if you want to approve that.

But with all that said, I like to take tuesday as a no insurance, no resistance training day, but that doesn't mean that i'm not doing anything for my overall health and fitness. On tuesdays, I do a series of heat, cold contrast. In other words, I get really, really warm.

And then I get really, really cold. I get really, really warm, and I get really called repeatedly. And the way I do that is by getting into a hot sona.

So for me, that's really hot, but i've built up my heat conditioning. So please don't do this unless you build up your the ability to withstand heat. And i'll get in for about twenty minutes, sometimes fifteen, but usually twenty minutes.

Then I get out, and then I will get into an ice bath or a cold water bath that's about forty five to fifty degrees from height. Again, don't get into water that so cold that you go into shock. I'll explain what a good cold stimulus could be for you and how to determine that.

Or if I don't have access to my sona and my ice bath, what I can do if i'm traveling is I will take a hot bath and then alternate with cold shower, hot bath, cold shower. It's hard to do hot bath, ice bath unless you have two baths. I don't know any hotel rooms, at least I never stating when there has two bags, so i'm sure they're out there.

But for me, this is heat called contrast. And really, what this day is about is two things. First of all, i'm trying to accelerate recovery from the leg workout I did previously.

Also, if you listen to our episode of the huberman la podcast about deliberate heat exposure, or you listen to our episode of the huberman lab cast about deliberate cold exposure, I talk about some of the benefits of heat and cold. And I get into a lot of details about how you can access heat. You can do bas.

You can do saw as you can even take hot showers. You don't have access to the any of that. You could even wrap your body from the neck down in garbage bag, plastic garbage bags, believe not restarts used to do this.

Put on some sats and go running that i'll get you warm again. Be careful not to overheat, and then you can get into a cold shower. So there a lot of ways, depending on your budget, what you have access to. I don't use cro these crowd therapy chAmbers.

They're hard to find their expensive um again, I use sona and ice a and I will do anywhere from three to five rounds, which is a lot anywhere from three to five rounds of heat for about twenty minutes and cold for about five minutes. How cold should the cold be recovered? This in the episode on deliberate cold exposure.

Here is a general rule of them IT should be cold enough that you really want to get out but not so cold that it's unsafe, and that will vary from person or persons. So I can I give you a simple prescriptive there. Same thing with the heat, hot enough that you're sweating and that you want to get out, but not so hot that you're running the risk of injuring yourself or killing yourself.

And again, that will vary from person to persons. You have to build up slowly, be careful and build up empirically. I do that on tuesdays again as a way to accelerate recovery.

And because it's very clear that they're cut of accused benefits, maybe even benefits for the brain related to the party of accused benefits, because worth the brain needs a lot of blood flow, needs a lot of um nutrient and other things flowing into and out of their debris out and nutrient and other things into the brain. Heat can help accelerate data, improve that. And so i'm doing that to improve cardio ashlar function, improve brain health.

And then the cold contrast provides a sort of accelerator on that. Or an amplifier, I think, is the Better way to phrase IT on that process. Because in the cold, you get visio construction, and then in the heat you get visual dilation until you're maxims ing that process, which is actually a neural process.

Nerves actually innovate the blood vessels in capitalists and and even the arteries in order to allow that construction and dilution process to occur. So tuesday is really about recovery, but my recovery day isn't necessarily about just laying around and not doing anything. I might still also take some walks that day.

Remember, I want to trying get that two hundred years of zone two cardio across the week. And sometimes, not often, but sometimes i'll get in a few minutes more of walking quickly that day. But generally, i'm working a lot on tuesday as I do on monday, and i'm a little bit tired or maybe even a little bit sore from my leg workout the previous day monday.

So I try to get that hot called contrast. There are other benefits to hot and cold contrast. We have a description of the different protocols for hot and for cold and their contrast.

At our huberman lab newsletter, you can find that by going to huberman lab dot com, go to the newsletter tab under the menu and you can sign up. You actually downal those protocols were easily without even signing up if you just want to access straight off. So tuesday, really about recovery, about getting some additional cardio asculum benefits from heat cold contrast.

One other thing that's built into the rational al for doing a lot of heat and cold on one day as opposed to doing IT everyday. Well, in addition to IT being a little bit more convenient because certainly some people don't have access to heat and cold on and cold dung at set up every day. So maybe getting to do that one day as more accessible or feasible.

But in addition to that, it's very clear that while there are benefits to doing sona often, and we talk about this in the deliberate heat episode and the episode we doctor on a Patrick when he was a guest on this podcast, it's also clear that if you do sona seldom, that is once a week, but you do a lot of IT on one day. So in this case, it's an hour. If it's member, it's or more, it's three to five rounds of twenty months of sona, followed by about five minutes of cold or so.

By doing that all on one day, the peer viewed research that's covered in the episode on deliberates heat, a study out of finland, show that you get massive, even sixteen fold increases in growth hormone, which are extremely beneficial for metabolic and for recovery. So these massive increases and growth hormone are seen when you are doing these sessions of sona that are repeated on the same day. And you're only doing that about once a week, or as if you do sona more often.

There are certainly benefits to that, but it's time consuming and you need access to sona more often than one day a week if you're doing IT more than one day a week. But if you do one day a week and you're doing a lot of sessions within that day, as i've detailed here, you see these massive increases in growth hormone that are not observe if you're doing sona more often for the other benefits of sona. Now the effects of cold are many.

It's not just VISA construction, but the effects of cold are also counterbaLanced by some of the problems with deliberate code exposure that maybe you've heard about on this podcast. And a lot of other podcasting seem to be a kind of A A buzz theme on twitter and elsewhere. And the point is that there are a number of quality studies showing that if you do deliberate cold exposure, in particular, ice bars are getting into very cold water immediately after an endurance training session or a strengthen hypertrophy session, IT can indeed, yes, I can disrupt or prevent some of the adaptations that you are seeking with strength and hyperdrive phy and enduring workout. okay.

So you heard that right? And I believe that to be true based on now several quality per reviewed studies. So by doing your deliberate cold exposure on tuesday, you're not going to get those effects, that is, the blocking of hyper trip or the blocking of strength improvement or the blocking or prevention of improvements.

And that would occur if you immediately got into the ice bah after a hyperdrive free strength or enduring workout. Now the caveat to that is, if you are somebody who likes to do cold showers, I am not aware of any data that says that cold showers cannot be performed after a strength hypercar for your interns workout. Cold showers are different than submersion up to the neck in an ice bath or another cold body water for a number different reasons.

In fact, they tap into different aspects of the nervous system entirely. We don't have time to go into that now. It's covered in the episode on deliberate cold exposure.

But the simple point is by doing your heat and cold contrast or eight, listen, if you're somebody who does not have access to sonor, you don't like hot baas and you just do some delivered cold exposure on tuesday. You are doing that separate from your strength and hypertrophy and endurance workouts such that I will not impede benefits of those workouts. Okay, so long enterance on sunday, leg resistance training on monday, on tuesday, heat cold contrast that brings us to wednesday.

And on wednesday, we get back to a resistance training workout. And the resistance training workout that I emphasize on wednesday is one in which you train your torso. Yes, literally your torso.

I know this is countered to the so called bro science of bro split I don't know who originated that term is a terrible term IT essentially um alienates anyone who's not a bro or considers themselves a bro. But in any case, this is not about training chest or back or shoulders. In fact it's really about strengthen ing the muscles of the torso and of course includes the chest in the lers in the back.

And I am sure, as I say this, a number of people out there who are obsessed with hypocrisy and muscle growth and filling out their shirts or whatever, maybe I think, oh no, you know, this is just kind of all around fitness. But no, the point is on wednesday, you train your torso and that's going to involve some pushing. So that's good for you.

That might include some training of things like bench Prices or incline Prices as well as shoulder presses or lateral raises, things for the shoulder as well as for the back. Some pulling exercises. These could be bent over rows or chin ups or pull ups. Again, there are enormous number of exercise for each and every one of these muscle groups.

Now I believe there is a clear benefit to training all these muscle groups together on the same day, because much in the same way that training legs all on one day can lead to the systemic effects, because their large muscle groups working about the pushing muscles and the pulling muscles of the torso on one day, at least in the context of this program, is very time efficient and tends to wake out into a number of different dimensions of health. At least i'm interested in, and I think a lot of other people are interested. What are those? Well, let's think again, I want to be strong in not just my legs, but my upper body.

I also may want may want to engage some hyperdrive phy to grow certain muscle groups in order to create a sense of baLance that could be pathetic reasons, but also for a balancing strength and for health and the integrity of the joints at at a. And in addition of that, by training bunch of different muscle groups together, you have the opportunity to get the more systemic corn mal effects. And metal bolic effects that occur when you're not just training one muscle group in iceland, that one muscle group, but rather training a bunch of muscle groups together.

So wednesday I drink torso and I do that and push pull fashion just for um kind of time efficiency. Sometimes that means doing a pushing exercise and then are polling exercise. Sometimes that might even mean doing a set of pushing and then a set of pulling and going back and forth. However, if you're in a gym, in a particular crowd, a gym, please don't be one of those people that colonize as multiple pieces of equipment and says, i'm working there, i'm working know that can be quite a dancing that can be hard to to orchestrate to work out like that.

So sometimes I will be, you know, starting off with a set of shoulder Prices and then doing all, you know, all your sets of those and then moving to your shops and then moving perhaps back to shoulder and realizing, uh, someone's on the machine that I want IT or using the equipment that I wanted. It's all just finish up the polling. I'll finish up the backwards and then going to the push.

I don't obsess over the alternation in any kind of strict way. I really just try to get the muscles of the torso trained. And again, it's too exercises per muscle group. And one of those exercises is going to be something where there's I realize this isn't physiologically accurate but are shortening of the muscle where they at the end of the movement, the muscle is under maximum contraction.

I could throughout some names of exercises just for for purpose of of understand that this would be know um like cable crossovers for the chested v uh the pee contraction is at the end where as something like an incline prestons more of a stretch providers done over a full range of motion at the beginning of the movement. So again, something where there's a stretch and something where there's a peak contraction for the shoulders a little bit harder do, although their ways to do that and jeff cavalry has excEllent workouts available, zero cost on youtube also as excEllent programs on his athlete next talk on sight, but certainly has a lot of excEllent protocols on his youtube and instagram. On youtube, you can put in his name and any muscle group that you want to train to have some terrific videos.

S describing exercise choice and other features of exercise parameters. Again, a peak contraction or shortening of the muscle peak contraction exercise and a stretching exercise. And so for the back one might say, okay, I seated row, or a bent over row, or a dumbbell row where the elbow was brought behind the torso for A P contraction movement.

And then for more of a stretching movement might be something like A A chin up or a pulp. And as I say this, I understand that stretching and peak contraction aren't the exact terms that one would use if they were a physiotherapist or a strengthened conditioning coach. But I think for the typical person who is trying to generate strengthened hypertrophy and those muscles are maintained strength and hyperdrive phy in those muscles, this kind of nominal latter way describing IT at least should be clear and and even efficient.

And just to remind you, as with the leg workout, the total duration of the torso workout is going to be fifty to sixty minutes. After a reform up, the sets and repetitions are going to be diced in the same way that I scribed earlier. So for about a month, it's going to be more sets.

So anywhere from three to five sets in the lower repetition range of four to eight repetitions. So that can be heavier weights and longer rest, as I described earlier, the rest intervals. And then for the next month, it's going to be moderate repetitions, fewer sets, the same way I described earlier.

And if you want more details on all of that, you can find that in the news letter related to the optimal or foundational fitness protocol that you can access a huberman lab dot com. One thing I should note about the wednesday torso workout is that I am a big believer in training the what I believe is the highly uh avoided or at least overlooked but vitally important aspect of total body stability, strength and safety, really safety, which is the neck. I realized a lot of people don't want a large neck, and I totally understand for esthetic reasons why they don't want that.

It's kind of interesting actually, if you think about IT that people have a large neck are often told they have no neck. People say that I no neck or they have no neck, when in fact, they referring to the fact that they have a very large neck. I don't know how I came to be.

Somebody, do you put in the comments why that is? How come when people have a big neck, they refer to IT as no neck? So why do I train the neck? I train the neck for a couple of reasons.

One is years ago I had accident or actually fell off a roof and i'd been training my neck at that time, uh, for a sport that I was involved in and I walked away from IT with a sore neck but not a broken neck and I thought, well, it's really great that I have, uh, been training my neck. In addition to that, I was once in a car accident where I was part. I just bought the car, my first new car purchase, parked in that car with my mother, my grandfather, in the back seat at the red light, and someone rammed into us at full speed.

Unfortunately none of us were hurt. We were all um rattled um and once again I was very sore in my back and in my neck. But I think one of the reasons why I was able to essentially walk away from that, I didn't have any sustained damage, was because I training my neck. But I started training my neck for sport, and I continued to train my neck because I noticed when I don't train my neck, I start getting shoulder issues.

And if you talk to an excEllent physiologist like doctor Kelly, star at of the ready state as an excEllent channel and find more of the social media and standard channels, are you talk to, uh, anyone out there who really understands the strength of the torso in the upper body and even the back? What you learn is that, of course, being the upper portion of the spine, stabilizing ing your neck is very important. Now, training the net can be a little bit detailed and specific, and even dangerous if you do IT wrong again.

Jeff caviar has a terrific set of videos on training the neck properly. I know a lot of people out there might think neck bridges, and I used to do neck bridges. I occasionally still sneaking in the neck bridge here there, although I don't recommend IT because in discussions to the jeff, he will tell you, and it's true that the disks eventually go and you can run into serious issues from doing bridges and IT doesn't happen gradually.

So you can't notice happening. You just happen suddenly. So I might occasionally do a neck bridge, but in general, all train neck by wrapping a plate in a town so that don't end up with an imprint of the weight value on my head or face and then moving the neck from side aside or front or back.

And again, we'll provide a link to those videos. It's a terrific set of videos that described how to train your neck properly and safely. So even if you're not trying to grow your neck, you definitely want to make sure that use some lit igh ts to make sure that your neck is stable and upright.

I say stable upright because it's very clear that for reasons related to texting and searing down at computers, and related to weak neck relative to the rest of the muscles that stabilize the spine, a lot of people, their default stand or their defauts posture, is which chin forward. And that's not good. Not only is IT esthetically not good, but you also can create all sorts of issues, relate to backpack and headaches and things that sort.

This is a real thing. Training your neck allows you to stand up right, sit up right. I even believe that allows you to do things like public speaking or have conversations with people on the street in a way where you are front facing is supposed to looking down.

So wednesday is torso and neck, and then comes thursday. And that means another cardio accused exercise session, although it's a brief one, unlike the entrance training on sunday, the cardiovascular session on thursday, and again, for me, IT falls on thursday. Bit for you.

I could fall on a different day depending on when you started. This protocol is going to be about, again, about thirty five minutes of for me running. Although IT could be rolling or IT could be cycling, IT could be something in that sort. The goal of this workout is what's important. The goal of this workout is to tap into member that long list we talk about earlier.

We've got skill and speed and power and strength and hypertension at ata at different forms of endurance is to get into that range of endurance where your heart rate is elevated quite a bit more than zone two, but that you're not really going all out sprint. So what that means for me is warming up for about five to ten minutes that could be jogging a little bit of light. Callista ics might even be hoping on a stationary bike, although to be as I low the stationary bike and then setting a timer in doing about thirty, but ideally thirty five minutes of what I call seventy five to eighty percent of all out.

Okay, I realized this spits in the face of all your heart rate monitor wearing super techy exercise types. But when I think of all out sprint, I think of one hundred percent. And what is that in my mind, that somebody is chasing me with a needle full of poison, and I am sprinting away at maximum speed?

That, for me is one hundred percent. So after a brief warm up, what i'm going to do is go out typically outside, although sometimes asked me on a trade, mini am traveling and move, run for about thirty to thirty five minutes at about seventy five or eighty percent of that all out. What that means is that i'm striving to keep a steady pace.

But in reality, I don't as sometimes have to stop at a stop light. There are cars, please don't run into traffic just to maintain that speed. In that timing, that would be terribly tagish to fitness, in particular lifespan.

That running tends to be running in which i'm breathing hard, so i'm not able to restrict myself to purely nasal breathing. And I should have mentioned earlier on the sunday long rock or waited, hike or jog, if i'm alone, I try to do por breathing. If i'm with other people, I am talking.

Obviously i'm not in do people or breathing because i'm talking. Although I sure that sometimes I wish I was doing two nail breathing that thursday work out accomplishes the number of things. First of all. IT really gets my heart rate up and IT improves multiple aspects of endpoint because as you recall earlier, the different bins of endurance that include muscular endurance, anaerobic that three determined at ranged in than thirty minutes are longer. None of them really precisely match what's accomplished in this thirty five minutes so cardiovascular session where i'm pushing hard, but not all out.

But that's exactly the reason to do IT, which is that IT taps into multiple fuel systems for the muscle and multiple aspects of the heart and capitals and arteries invades that are involved in generating that movement. So IT really cuts up broad swap into multiple categories of endurance. And also just keep in mind what this foundational, optimized, this protocol is really designed to do.

In my mind, a foundation of witness protocol is one that leaves you or has you in a state where, if you need to walk really far and Carry a bunch of weight, you can do IT. If you need to lift the heavy object with your legs, you can do IT. If you need to run really fast for two minutes, you can do IT.

And if you need to run a little bit further, like maybe you in ten minutes, for whatever reason, you can do that. So it's a really kind of all around fitness program. And that thirty five minute run again could be swapped with a thirty five minute or grow, or sometimes if you only have access to a stationary bike, could do that.

I supose if you didn't have access to any equipment. And running is not your thing. One thing that I have done, especially if i've been stuck in a hotel, because I arrived late, some place, and I really want to get this work out in, you could do the dreaded burpee.

I know there a lot of opinions out there. Some people think burpy are down, right, dangerous. Other people love burpy. You could do that, or you could do really fast, but full jumping jacks. I know it's a little P E class, right, physical education class ish. But sometimes if I need to get the work out in, what i'll do in a hotel, if i've arrived late particular day of travel, is I will find the stairwell, the fire stairwell, i'll make sure, by the way, that I can get back into the building, because i've been locked in those stairs before.

And I will simply walk really fast up the stairwell, as many flies of stairs there are, or maybe even jog IT, not quite sprint, but they run up those stairs over and over and over again in order to get that thirty five minutes of seventy five to eighty percent of max output. Cardiff asked lar, work done. And if i'm really just restricted to my hotel room, i'll just do jumping jacks for thirty, thirty five minutes, sometimes while washing something on T V.

And believe me, if you're doing full jumping jacks, like really extending your legs, really getting arms overhead and really doing the full movement, my time you hit five or six minutes, you are going to be sweating and your heart red is really going to be up. I also nice will travel with a jump rope. I always try and travel with a jump rope and skip rope um much to the dismay of the people who house below me in the hotel room.

Skipping rope, I should mention, can be a very effective way of getting cardiff as training while you're on the road. But in all seriousness, if you're in a hotel rumor and apartment and you can't really jump high and you're very good at jumping rope, but you'll find is it's not going to get you into that higher elevated heart rate zone, okay, can be great for zone two type training. But if you're really good at skipping rope, and I wouldn't say i'm really good out, but i've done enough skipping rope that I can just kind of cruise and talk and it's more zone too wish even feels like walking at times.

You can do double enders where you you know really jumping in and putting the rope under your twice each time or crossovers that are depending on your skill level. But again, if you're in an apartment, you're in a hotel that can be harder to do. And because there's some skill involved, sometimes you're stopping more often than you're continuing, by the way.

And I I just have to mention this, a really terrific instagram channel is ana skips. This is a teacher of science teacher or I ve. It's a math, maths, as they say in the U K, because she's in the U. K. Maths teacher.

I don't know anna, but I know SHE steps because he has an amazing instagram shall called ana skips and what's really cool about her instagram and he shows you her progression from not being able to skip up at all to the absolutely incredible types of rope skipping that she's doing each morning while getting sunlight, which of course, is an essential health protocol to check out and skips on instruct, really inspiring and make me wanna get Better at skipping rope. I'm still working at IT. okay.

So with that, thursday, cardiff cua, let's call IT endurance. But cardiovascular training work out done around roles friday and on friday, i'm going to do another cardiff asked lar training session. And I looked to this earlier, but this cardiff asked lar training session is also designed to tap into some of the ability of hard, I should say, high intensity interval training to tap into strength and hypertrophy increases for the legs.

Because remember, we train legs on monday. And what the science tells us is that protein synthesis in a muscle group can be stimulated about every forty two to seventy two hours. And so we've had tuesday off, wednesday off and thursday off. And you don't want to lose progress that you made from that terrific monday leg workout.

But in order to make sure that you can do the other things that follow in this programme and pick back up on monday with another leg workout, at least for me with my recovery abilities of my work schedule, i'm not going to do an entire other leg workout because it's going to set the whole thing out of wac. That is I won't be able to consistently do the same workout on the same days of each week. Now with that said, a little bit later or explain what happens if you have to miss a work out, how you can combine days at that.

But I really strive to get certain workouts done on certain days consistently. Least is best I can. So friday is high intensity universe training that can take a variety of different forms. For me, the ideal thing to do for me, again, you could do something completely different. Exercise choice.

Again, you will be governed by what you can do safely so you don't injure yourself and that you can perform effectively, and that gets you or provide the stimulus s that you want. And what i'm trying to do on friday is get my heart rate way. Wait up.

Talk about this in the episode with doctor and I gAllen. In addition to the benefits of getting one hundred native two hundred minutes of zone to cardio per week minimum, it's a really good idea to get up to that max or near max heart rate at least once a week. And you're not going to do that for very long periods of time.

You're not going to do that for thirty minutes. You can't sprint all out for thirty minutes unless you're Steve refounding. If you haven't seen the movies without limits or preventing, you should absolutely see those.

He was able to you know go out and run twelve labs what seem to be an all out sprint or close to IT. Incredible but most people are not going to do that. Um we're going to be Carried away on a stretcher if they try these high intensity interval training for me, ideally would be on so called a sault bike or a aird's bike.

So these bikes that have the fan, which might seem like, oh, you know just cools you off, but actually there's a lot of resistance there. So what I will typically do is a twenty to thirty second all out sprint using arms and legs, and then ten seconds rest and then repeat all out sprint for twenty or thirty seconds, ten seconds rest, repeat. And i'll do that for anywhere from eight to twelve rounds, which trust me, even if you start out a little bit less, or I should say, not all out in intensity, your effort, by time you hit the fifth or six one, you will be certainly headed into, if not a near your maximum heart rate.

Now, what is your maximum heart rate? Do you need a heart rate monitor? No, if you d like using that sort of thing, great. But again, andy albin beautifully supply us with the information.

He said, if you take the number two hundred and twenty, you subtract your age that for most people, most is going to be your maximum heart rate. Although for certain people who are very fit or certain ages, that's not going to apply. So it's a little bit too crude measure, but it's a good starting place. And you can look up other information or see that podcast episode. We provide a linked to IT in the show of captions.

If you want to get more details on that, I don't use a Harryman or what i'm trying to do is get to that point where I and quote, feel like I want to die now I don't want to die and please don't die, right if you're not in good cardiff to help, do not just jump right into this fitness protocol. But I wanna get to the point where I really feel like I could not pedal any faster or pull any faster on them on the adult bike, the airline bike, or if i'm doing this workout in a place or at a time, or because I choose to not use a biker a role, because you could all see, use a role, I will simply do sprint, jog intervals. I will spring for twenty or thirty seconds, then jog for ten seconds, spring for twenty or thirty seconds, and the job for for ten seconds.

And just repeat. You should have a big field next to my laboratory, my old laboratory, and he's to bring my buddoor costell there. He was really good at the first sprint part, and he would just lie down and watch.

He didn't even do the job part. I would just go back and forth back and fourth, back and four, painting like a bulldog, nonstop, barely able to recover before sprinting again. And the basis of this workout again in several, first of all, is to get the heart rate really high up towards maximum heart rate at least once a week. So accomplish that this friday.

Also, if you are sprinting and then jogging or you are really pushing hard on a sault by or an airline e bike, we're using a, for instance, a ski or the skill machine or any number of different cardiovascular um training tools, you are going to get activation of the legs, of course not to the same degree as you would with squats or deadly or leg extensions and lecrone ls that simply not the case. But you're going to trigger strength and hypocrisy and other types of adaptations in those muscle groups. So this for me also represent the second leg workout of the week where i'm not touching any weights.

One important point that I don't think i've heard mention anywhere else, but that I hope to have doctor Kelly start at on the pocket to discuss them, that i've discuss with him one on one, which is be careful with all out sprint or all out anything cardigan, cute exercise, you can get injured doing those. So for instance, if you go out and you just spring across a field all out twenty or thirty seconds and then walk back and can do IT again and again, don't be surprised if the next day you have some psychotics or even some pelvic floor pain. I don't recommend going all out on any movement that you can't perform with perfect form.

okay? So for me, I really try and stay away from all out sprint. I'll sprint IT about ninety five percent of what I can do because I find if I go all out print, I don't know what the reason is but I might be an over extension of a limb or something like that.

I'm not a sprinter. I'm not a sprinting coach. I do hope to get stupid million on here or um the and fh there were excEllent sprinting coaches at some point.

They are world class sprinting coaches. But i'm not a pro sprinter. I'm not even a amateur sprinter. I'm a fitness sprinter. So the airline or assault bike or the role is really a safer option for me.

And if i'm running or i'm doing some sort of movement where i'm unconstrained really in terms of how far my stride is, I mean, obviously constrained by the mosquito. I'm really careful to not over extend or do something like that. The only way to do that did not go all out. So again, the goal for this friday workout is to really get the heart rate high, do intensity interval training a number different ways you can do that. You can look up H I I T hit workout online, find the one that's best for you, and really pick something that safe that you can do consistently.

And I believe that ideally will also trigger a bit of either strengthened hypocrisy and speed power maintenance or even give you a little bit of a stimulus so that by time you roll around to that leg, work out on again on monday, you got a little bit of an additional boost to your like strange hypocrisy, speed and power. So we've covered sunday through friday, and then saturday rolls around. And saturday is when you train arms, caves and neck.

So this may sound as if you're training bunch of small muscle groups, biceps. Try seps next in cabs. And that's true, but I should mention that you are also training your torso a second time and you're doing IT indirectly or sometimes not IT indirectly.

Why do I say this will keep in mind again that for strength and hypercharged y, you're going for that once about every forty eight to seventy two hours. You want to stimulate that on wednesday is when you trained your torso, right? Just showers, back and neck. You've had thursday to rest, friday to rest.

I know a lot of people are going to want to emphasize those body parts and think, I you have to train IT twice a week, but if you have modest recovery ability or low recovery ability, such as I do, and you're doing these other cardio agus training sessions a well, then on saturday is when you will train arms, caves and neck directly. But included in that, remember, two exercises per muscle group, one with a peak contraction, one with someone of a stretch there, included in that I suggest doing some sort of deep movement, which I think he was possible at salons at the dippers, synonymous with, or at least similar to, an upper body squad. Excuse me, power, if I got that wrong, maybe IT wasn't you that said that, but big mr.

Of his work. And certainly the dip is a great exercise to hit multiple muscle groups, IT, chest, shoulders and try seps, maybe even some back to some extent, depending on how you do IT. So doing some dipping movement will indirectly stimulate a strange hypocrisy at sea in the chest and shoulders, and including some sort of polling movement for the bisset, like a chin, ut or palms facing movement, pulling up from to the bar, especially if it's a close griped type movement, but even if it's a wide grip type movement, will of course trigger strengthen hyperdrive phy maintenance or improvements in the biceps, but will also trigger strange hypocrisy in the light, in the back.

okay. So saturday is this ARM workout. With that, i'll just give an example of a potential workout where you might do a few more exercise, maybe not just two, but maybe three, to make sure you get the torso indirect stimulation.

So what would this look like? Well, this might be your sort of classic dumbbell curls for the best set, and maybe incline curl for the bias, because IT has more of a stretch on an incline bench. And then you might finish with two sets of chin ups, pots of palms facing your chin ups, or three sets of chinese, depending on whether not you're in a heavy load month or a or a more mother weight month.

Again, activating the backup muscles because arms state, but also activating strengthened hyperdrive phy in the late at least maintaining IT so that because you're not trying those torso muscles again until wednesday, you're not allowing the hypertension and strange games that you generated on wednesday to atrophy, to disappear. Then thinking about try seps IT might be some sort try steps, isolation or pee contraction movement that could be try to kickback or some overhead extension would be more a stretch tight movement than a kept. But then also doing regular old dips, you might even start with depth, which again are going to activate those torsos, muscles and the triplets and then caf work in the same way that you did on monday.

And network again. I am a believer in training neck multiple times per week. And if you are able to finish all of that in forty five or fifty minutes, great. Most people will find when you're doing a lot of small muscle groups, actually takes longer because you have to go around to more exercises. But again, just said here to the same principles we talked about before, about fifty five years to sixty minutes of real work after a warm up with an atrix next to that, that if someone's on the equipment or you can find the dumb ls, you need at a then maybe seventy five minutes max. But really trying to not extend that workout too long, making sure that you activate the arms directly, but also activating the torso muscles indirectly.

And again, I won't repeat this time again, but following the same weight and repetition and rest interval schedule that we talked about earlier, a bit heavier, lower reps, more sets and longer rest for about a month, and then alternating to more repetitions, yet fewer sets, right, shorter rest intervals, and do that for about a month is Carry through for all the resistance training workouts regardless of the day of the week. So we completed the total art across the week, and we can summer ze IT as saying sunday, let's say, long and dance. Monday is leg resistance training.

Tuesday, heat cold contrast. Wednesday, torso training plus neck. Thursday, I would call IT moderate intensity cardiac lar exercise, so that thirty five minute modern intensity car diva cup exercise.

Friday high intensity interval training of sprinting or some of variation there up. And saturday, arms, cave's, neck and torso indirect work. That's the total structure.

But I want to emphasize again, you do not need to start this on sunday. That is, you could make the long endurance work start on tuesday and then just filling the rest as describe before. It's really up to you.

There's another important point I want to make, which is that neither I nor anyone is going to be successful in doing the exact workout on the exact same days of every week because of travel, work, illness, other demands at sea. The thing about the schedule that I like so much that I do believe that will benefit you as well is that you have some flexibility there. What's the flexibility?

Well, let's say you train, you are typical sunday workout of endpoint, then you train legs on monday and then you don't manage to do your heat cold contrast on tuesday for whatever reason. Well, you can put IT on wednesday. Just make sure that if you're going to do the cold stimulus that you don't do IT too close, not within four, ideally eight hours after the training of torso, but you could do IT before, or you could do IT just heat and skip the cold that particular week, right? Not ideal, but Better than not doing anything.

Let's say, for instance, ince, the leg workout was particularly brutal. You don't sleep that well on monday night or tuesday night. Well, then should you do the torso work out on wednesday? Well, I would say, why not move the heat called contrast to wednesday and then push that torso work out to thursday? And maybe also trying to do that thirty five minute run on thursday, everyone's in a while, rather than lose the total control of the program and let everything shu fle forward, here's the basic principle.

I do believe that any one of these workouts, whether to enterance or resistance training, can be shifted either one day forward or one day back, right? You could delete by a day or you could accelerate IT by a day in order to make sure that you get everything done across the week. In fact, I would say the best way to think about this foundational fitness program is not from the details up, but from the top down, from the big picture down to the details.

And say to yourself, once a week you're going to get some long in dance, in another day during the week are going to make sure that you get a kind of moderate faster endurance work out in, and then one other day during the week are going na get in all out sprint high intensity Carter vascular exercise work out and you're onna get those three workouts in somehow. And then in addition to that, you will also do resistance training for every muscle group in your body. And that means doing your legs hard at least once a week, you're torso hard at least once a week, and your arms hard at least once a week.

And of course, you are also paying attention to train your caves. And I do, for reasons I described before, believe that you want to train your neck, at least to keep IT strong. You may not want to generate hyperdrive phy there.

People vary in terms of how quickly their neck grows. Some people goes very, very fast. Other people, for the life of them, they can get much error y in their neck. But keeping that next strong, at least to some very light work to moderate weight work very, very important. For reason I stated earlier, if you set out those goals, then the specific days that you do each workout isn't as critical, but the specific spacing is.

So for instance, you're not going to wanted to your high intensity interval training the day after you train your legs because if you're doing the high intensity interval training correctly, you're going to be taxing your legs and eating into the recovery. And so you want to space them out by two or three days. So I think you'll notice that the point is really to optimize everything on the whole rather than any one specific aspect of training or adaptation.

Now that said, I do realize that some people might be hyper focused on things like strengthen hypertrophy and the esthetics that come with IT. The key point about strange type potpies and weight training, and this is something that was been covered on multiple podcast, certainly the one with f caviar and with doctor, any carbon in the one that I did on building muscle strength hypercharged y the solo episode. And that is the following.

IT is the rare individual who has perfectly baLanced moscot ure, like most people, can be a bit quad dominant or hamstring dominant or they have trouble activating their goods or somebody has a terrible time trying to activate their their chest muscles. But they're very strong in the back and said a, it's very clear that we can know that not just based on aesthetics, right, but based on deliberate contract ability of those muscles. So I don't want to get into this in too much detail for sake of time.

This is something that has peer reviewed research to support IT and was also discussed extensively with jeff cabinet when he was a gas and that actually he is really popular. Zed, this notion, and it's absolutely true, which is that if you can contract a muscle very hard to the point where almost feels like it's cramping, if you can do that even when there's no weight in your hand or is no resistance against IT. So you're just using your mind muscle connection to contract that muscle hard and isolated, chances are you'll be able to generate hydrophone and strength gains pretty easily in that muscle compared to muscles that you have a harder time activating.

So during all resistance training that mine muscle link is really important ah so much so that some people will even trying to emphasize contraction the muscles in between sea. I personally, because i'm not somebody who likes a mirror when I work out and i'm not somebody who um wants to spend time in between sets flexing muscles and a um for whatever reason, I want to actually rest between that. And i'm more concerned with performance during those sets and really putting my mind into the muscle during the set.

I really trying to emphasize deep relaxation between sets. And so here's a tool that, again, is built out of science. And I should take peer review of studies, some of which are being done in my lab, but other lab s as well, which is the in between sets.

What I really strive to do is to bring my heart rate down as much as possible, call myself down as much as possible. Now do this so called physiological sign in order to do that. That's two. And nails through the nose back to back. And then long, full x hail through the mouth.

I just did IT partially there, a first sick of time again, so a big, deeper in hell through the nose, and then sneaking a little bit more on a second, and hail to maximum inflated the lungs, the EV, the lungs. And then a full x hail of all are via the mouth to empty your lungs. That's the fastest way that we are aware of to calm nervous system down.

And really in between sets, you can use that to calm yourself down and conserve energy. But then as you move in to the weight training set, you really want to catch IT up your focus and attention to the muscles that you're going to be using. Now i'd like to acknowledge that there's a huge danger parameters in terms of how to actually perform during the set, you can focus on a particular muscle and trying really isolate from the beginning of the movement.

Some people really try and isolated only during the peak contraction. Some people actually ate the negative, their speed. And there are, again, remember, concepts are few, methods are many. And if you're interested in the various methods of eventually x and concentric and all the different ways of changing up k dies and so forth during ing sectors, an enormous amount of quality information out there, far too much for us to get into into detail now.

But what I described, the general principles of how to set your mind, if you will, during the set, you should be focused on the muscles that you're using and or removing the weight. If movement the way is more important, you can either focus on moving the weight or chAllenging muscles, right? You can either try and isolate muscles and make specific muscles do the work, or simply moving the weight, moving the way this is going to be more gear towards strength improvements.

But focusing on the muscle, so called my muscle link, is going to shift that very same set more toward hypertext. Y, I realize i'm painting with a broad brush. Er, but none there's this is grounded in the way that the nervous system govern moscow contraction.

And while I think most people are familiar with the number of different variables associated with the resistance training sets, reps, rest intervals, cadence at at a there are also a tremendous number of very important variables for endurance and any kind of cardiology lar training. And there are a lot of excEllent resources out there about that. Think the most important one.

In fact, I will go on record saying what I believe to be the most important variable for any endurance or cott of vascular training is that because it's a repetitive movement that you are able to complete the movement safely, meaning you're not putting your body into range of motion or into positions that can damage joints or put you in any kind of compromise state. And some of my thing, well, that seems kind of silly. But if you've ever said that, for instance, the seat too high on a stationary bike and then done area dine or a salt bike type interval training springs, if IT set too high and you're over striding as IT were the next day, you can really pay the Price in terms of some backend in or ciadea.

And sometimes that pain can extend for for quite a while. So of course, you don't want to approach any exercise with so much caution that it's neurotic and preventive. And if you don't want approach any exercise in any way that's so cavalry, forgive the pung, jeff, that you're also going to compromise your the integrity of your joints in musculars and connective issue.

Let's talk about some real world practical variables. For instance, let's say you get a poor to terrible nights sleep should you train the next day or not? Well, that really depends.

I can honestly say i've had some of the best training sessions, resistance training or enduring training sessions after a really poor night night sleep. But that's the rare event. More often than not, if i'm not sleeping well, have had a terrible nights left the next day, I will just skip training that day.

I know that will shock a number view out there. Perhaps you're already calling me names we could seta, but I find that if you've slept really poor lie, or i've had a very stressful event the day before and I don't sleep well, training the next day sets me up for getting ill. And getting ill sets me up for not being able to train for multiple days.

So IT is my preference, in that case, to skip a day and really focus on recovery. And then as I mentioned earlier, slide that work out to the next day and rarely double that workout up with another workout, but then just slide the schedule forward by a day. But I really try and strive that is I really try to double up at least some workouts later in the week, in that case, so that I can get back on schedule of starting the seven day protocol again on the same day.

I don't want to be excessively vague. What i'm trying to say is I trying to here to the same schedule, but if I get a poor nights left, i'll just simply skip the workout the next day, slight to workout forward. There is one exception to that, and it's an important exception, which is there are times when I have not slept well or i've had some particularly stressful event the day before and haven't slept well, but i'm able to do so called N S T R non sleeve deep press the next day.

So there have been times when i've only yet three or four hours of sleep the night before, and i'm feeling IT really behind the ball the next morning, but I really want to get my workout in. So instead what I will do is a ten, but ideally in that case a thirty or even sixty minutes non sleep deep breath. And there is a ten minute non sleep depressed protocol read by me um but IT is a non spiritual, non mystical, science supported non sleep deep breath protocol available on youtube.

We can simply put my name huberman in, put N S D R and virtue san virt S A N into youtube when you'll find that script, there are other N S D R scripts that you can find now on spotify and on youtube. And if you fall asleep during those non sleep depressed ript, that's great. And if you don't, you will also find that IT will restore your ability to perform mental and physical work.

So there are times when I haven't got as much sleep as I would like. I'm feeling a bit more stressed for whatever reason, and i'll do nsd r and then I will go train. And that often works fabulously well for me.

And then I don't have to skip work out entirely just because get a good night sleep. A lot of people ask whether or not you should train faster or fed. And this is a very controversial area.

I personally prefer to do my cardiovascular or work, not having eaten anything in the previous three to ten hours. And typically that's because I wake up and i'll do the kind of Oscar training within about an hour of waking up, sometimes later, because my first male generally falls, generally not always falls, around eleven A M. I don't do any kind of formal international investing, but typically my meal schedule somewhere between eleven am and my last by the food is around eight pm.

But i'm not super strict about that. I might eat you know late this nine pm and I might eat something at ten A M if I wake up really hungry and might have something before eleven A M. I'm not neurotic about IT, but in terms of training, I like to train fasted, and that includes the resistance training workout. And those come early in the day for me.

And typically, if i'm going to train legs on monday, for instance, which is when I train legs, i'll make sure that the night before i'm ingesting some starch, some high rate like rice or poster or something in that sort to make sure that when I do that morning like workout, I have enough linkage in in the muscles. Again, nutrition is a somewhat controversial area. In fact, um I can evoke very strong feelings because I know we've got vegans and we've got on the and I S and people, kiddo, this isn't really the format for us to get into all of that.

I think the rule to follow is figure out what optimizes your training for your particular training goals. For me, that most often means training faster and then eating pretty soon after I trained. And if it's a high intensity resistance training workout, and Frankly, all of my resistance of training work out are pretty high intensity, i'm not going to failure on every set, but at least about thirty percent of those sets i'm going to failure.

And the other says i'm working very hard nonetheless. Well, then I eat some starches after I trained, and I also adjust some protein in the form of a protein drank, or a meal that includes some protein food. But I don't like IT before I do resistance training, at least not within the hour before I do resistance training. No exceptions to that. And I should say that the same basically applies to endure work.

If i'm going to head out for a run to pick, I don't want my belley full of food or any food at all, but there are times where I wake up hungry and I very much need to eat something or I have something scheduled socially like a breakfast and have that breakfast and then an hour ninety minutes later i'll do my workout um because I want to make sure that I finish the work out again. I'm not neurotically attached to training, fasted or fed. For me, fasted is preferred, but if I have to train, fed, Better to train them to not train at all.

We have been talked so much about flexibility yet, but we did an entire episode, huberman and podcast on flexibility. And I encourage you to check out that episode if you're interested in increasing your flexibility. But the basic take away from that episode is that if you look at what i'd like to call the center of mass of the research, that is most of the studies and what the conclusions of most of the qualities studies point to.

So not the exceptions, but the kind of general rules that have been cleaned over time from multiple labs over multiple decades. That said, what you find is that static stretching that is holding a stretch, and in fact, exhaling and relaxing the midsection and torso and relaxing into the stretch, as opposed to stay full of air and tense, but mentally and physically relaxing into the stretch, but not stretching maximum. That is not extending as far as you possibly can go, but more like sixty percent, even less.

And then holding those static stretches for anywhere from thirty to sixty seconds, and then repeating, doing that two or three times throughout the week for multiple muscle groups. So could be required. Your ships could be perham strings for your lats.

Their protocols out there. In fact, we have a newsletter that is focused entirely on protocols for flexibility and stretching. You can find that again, by going huberman lab 点 com， you don't even need to sign up for the news letter, although we invite youtube if you like.

But you can simply go there, scroll down to the flexibility newsletter and all the protocols were there for each of the muscle groups is set up. But what I typically try to do is some stretching in the evening because I trained in the morning as i'm perhaps getting ready for bed. Or if the T V.

Is on, which in our house doesn't typically go on because we don't have a TV. But of course, there are computers know people are on their computers at sea. Well, i'll trying to do some stretching while I do that.

I also have a standing desk. So during the day at work, regardless of whether not I train that morning or not, we're i'm going to train the afternoon. I'll trying to do some static stretching, my hamp rings, my cos, my lads, my shoulder, my back really doesn't take much time.

And I really trying to space that out throughout the week, which if you look at the peer reviewed research, match as well to what's known to be most effective, which you're going to be short, repeated sessions, ideally every day. But truth told, I fail. I categorically fail.

I was about to think whether not I ever stretch every day. I failed to do IT everyday, but I get about three or so stretching sessions in per week. And again, it's just static called trying to really relaxed into the stretch. Now the relax into the stretch is something has been talked about in martial arts circles and poles. That sun has an excEllent book on stretching.

We can provide a link to that talks about this has a lot to do with relaxation of the nervous system in the way that the nervous interval muscles and allow for stretch, if you will, also the way that the tenants and legions are, are innovated by nerves. The converse is also true in here. Again, this is a principle that um problem is put forth um I believe he calls IT irradiation, meaning a radiating out or eminent out from a source which is that while explaining and relaxing the torso, the midsection, some people called the core, although some people don't like that term, can facilitate relaxation and stretching through a large range of motion.

So too can contracting the core, the midsection or gripping very tightly with the fist can facilitate muscular contraction because of the way that the nervous system heavily, we can even say, over represents the fish in the brain. And so how would you apply this to your overall a foundational fitness protocol? Well, IT turns out that lets say you're doing movement that involves one line moving and then the other.

I say it's by set curls, just for sake of example. Turns out that you will actually be stronger in moving that dum bell with the ARM that happens to be moving if you grip the handle very tightly, but also grip the handle of the opposite dump l very tightly. Now that said, in between sets, I encourage you to do the opposite, to try and completely relaxed in between sets.

Combine that with a physiological side, and then when the set, the next set commences, employ that very strong grip, both again, of the of the way that moving in, in the way that at that moment might be stationary or an icon metric position. So the nervous system, of course, is what controlling muscles, and that Operates in both directions. If you want to relax, try and use long x sales, maybe you in physical ological size and really concentrate on mentally and physically real lexing, in particular, your core and your face.

And if you want to generate force and you want to move a heavy barbelle or dum bell, you want to do a chin up with the maximum force. That's when you can employ the opposite, which would be to grip the bar dum bell IT that are very tightly, and you want to contract your core, even fill your body with air as a pluggable, the leaks at set up. So this gets into a form and movement, which is an extensive, a near infinite, a landscape of discussion, again, that we don't have time to go into.

Just want to mention those two nervous system related tips because, I suppose as a neuroscientist, they appeal to me because they are grounded in fundamental principles of how the other system intervac muscle. And I know that they will benefit you the first time you use them and every time. Speaking of grip and nervous system and fitness and longevity, dr.

Peter ita, who is a medical doctor, was a guest on the huberman la. Podcast and provided an enormous wealth of information on that podcast episode. I really encourage you to check IT out when you have time.

And of course, as his own spectacular podcast, the drive with Peter, a tea Peter doctor, you should say, often talks about certain movements or exercises that you should perform, not just to improve your fitness, but also to touch into or measure how fit you are and how well you are progressing toward a long lifespan and health span. And one of those includes the ability to hang from a bar for a minute or longer. And there are a number of different expectations that one can have of how long they should be able to hang from a bar, depending on their age and their fitness level.

Set a please check out doctor ity is podcast and his various social media sites to get more information on that. But what I can tell you is that if you're going to hang from a bar and you wants to hang from that bar as long as possible, which turns out to be an interesting and important metric of your health, then gripping the bar very tightly will actually help. Earlier, we talked about whether or not to train if you're sleep deprived and how to recover from what I would say is moderate sleep deprivation by doing n sdr.

As opposed to total sleeve devices like being up all night or having a truly miserable night. Which case I think you should just skip training the next day and slide IT forward. Now a similar issue comes up from time to time, where people wonder whether not they should train or not if they are sick.

Here, there's all sorts of crazy gym law and sport specific law. For instance, I used to hear this when I ran across country. There was this adage that if the symptoms were from the neck up, you could still train.

That is, if you were really congested and you had a headache, you could still run. Whether if IT was in your chest and in your logs, you couldn't run. I don't think there is any data once ever to support whether not that's true or whether it's is not true for myself.

And because my general goal is to be training and fit over time, but also to include general health in the fitness equation, that is to not be sick or chronically sick, and certainly not to get other people sick. If I have a little tiny snifter, I think I might be getting sick even then. I'm a little cautious in the sense that i'm not going to do my typical workout.

I might stop IT about fifteen minutes earlier, and I would do that not by neglecting anybody, parts or anything like that sort of. It's a wait training work out by by simply reducing the total number of sets. I probably wouldn't do any sets to failure.

If I did, I might reduce the total number or percentage of sets to failure from about thirty percent of sets to maybe closer to ten percent of sets, something like that. And if IT was in dance work, I might throat back by ten or twenty percent. And I was short in the total duration of the workout.

And I often find. That because of the known, yes, peer reviewed, known immune system enhancing effects of exercise, sometimes that alone will allow me to avoid getting sick. But of course, i'm also careful to get home, take a hot shower, not stressed myself out, if I can avoid getting myself stressed out, and focus on sleep n sdr, other forms of recovery, good nutrition at seta.

If, however, I have a real snifter a cold, i'm not feeling well, or I think I might be coming down with the flu. I absolutely do not train and I don't get back into training of any kind until i'm completely recovered. So what i'm basically saying is that, no, I don't believe you should train if you're sick.

And perhaps equally importantly, when you come back from a layoff, ff of any kind, whether or not because of illness or for whatever reason, I do believe that because your body is a bit untrained, it's not ideal to jump, write back in the maximum training and to take one, maybe two weeks of ramping up to the full duration and intensity of workouts. Then I would continue on going for however many cycles I can complete before I had another sickness or I had another gap in my schedule due to family obligations or other obligations at set up. So we've covered a lot of tools and protocols and variables related to fitness, but we have by no means covered all the available tools and protocols and their habits.

Before we wrap up, I do want to emphasize one tool. It's a very easy, in fact zero cost, very low time commitment tool. And this, who was one that was provided again by doctoring the galen when he was on the huberman lab podcast, and is a tool that there is excEllent research to support the effectiveness of, and that I do believe should come at the end of every training session. And that's to do three to five minutes of deliberately slow breathing IT sounds so simple, three to five minutes of deliberately slowed breathing.

So this could be while you're in the shower or when you arrive at your car, you might sit your car quietly and do that if you have time, or maybe even while you're driving back to or on to your next destination just to really slow down your breathing, to really look at the recovery period that has to follow each training session, and of course, during which the adaptations, the changes that make you more fit then you were going into the exercise occur. And that three to five minutes of deliberately slowed breathing has been shown in ane's group, and in related experiments, not exactly same, but related experiments in our laboratory and other laboratories to really so called downshift, the nervous system, and really set you up for maximum recovery, rapid recovery, and allow you to lean into the next training session with full intensity when that training session eventually arrives. So it's a very simple tool, but a very potent tool for your overall fitness.

So thank you for joining me for this discussion of what i'm calling a foundational. We could even get bold and call in an optimal fitness protocol. Though the word optimal is a tRicky one, there is no real optimal fitness protocol.

And today, what I really tried to focus on is this foundational protocol. Because IT does allow you to check off most, if not all, the boxes related to strength, endurance, hypocrisy, speed, power, flexibility. You will also teach you how to regulate your nervous system up and down, that is, to ramp up and focus mind muscle, link eta, and then quickly calm down. Physiological size, three to five minute decompresses breathing at the end of training at sea.

Really, even though I talked about the protocol that I follow, and again, that we will provide us a newsletter at huberman lab 点 com， if you want to look at IT in more detail, even though we talk about IT in the context of what I do, again, I really want to emphasize that this protocol and the description of this protocol and all its variables, really for you and for you to tailor to your specific needs. So please take the protocol into consideration, but do not treat IT as holy, treated as a starting point from which you can adapt IT to your specific fitness needs. If you're learning from and or enjoying the huberman lab podcast, please subscribe to our youtube channel.

That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. In addition, please subscribe to the huberman lab podcast on spotify and apple. And on both spotify, apple, you also have the opportunity to leave us up to a five star review.

If you have questions for us or comments about the information we've covered or suggestions about future guess, please put those in the comments section on youtube. We do read all the comments. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning of today's episode.

That's the best way to support the huberman lab podcast. Not so much today, but in many previous episodes of the huberman lab podcast, we talk about supplements. While supplements are not necessary for everybody, many people drive to menus benefit from them for things like enhancing sleep and focus and hormonal optimization.

The human lab podcast is partner with momentous supplements. If you like to see the supplements to the huberman lab podcast is partner with momentous on, you can go to live momentous built. O, U, S.

So live momentous dot com slash huberman in. And there you'll see a number of the supplements that we talk about regularly on the podcast. And SHE just mentioned that that kind dog of supplement is constantly being updated.

As mentioned at the beginning of today's episode, the human lab pocket has now launched a premium channel. That premium channel will feature a monthly ams or ask me anything where I answer your questions in depth as well as other premium resources. If you'd like to subscribe to the premium channel, you can simply go to huberman lab dot com.

Slash SHE mentioned that the proceeds from the premium channel go to support the standard huberman lab podcast, which will continue to be released every monday per usual. As well as supporting various research projects done on humans to create the sorts of tools for mental health, physical health and performance that you hear about on the huberman lab podcast. Again, it's huberman lab dot com slash premium to subscribe.

It's ten dollars a month or one hundred dollars per year. If you haven't already subscribe to our zero costs newsletter, we have what is called the neural network newsletter. You can subscribe by going to huberman lab dcom.

Go to the menu and click on newsletters. Those newsletters include summaries of podcast episodes, list of tools from the huberman lab podcast. And if you like to see previous newsletters that we've released, you can also just go to huberman lab dog, click on newsletter in the menu and you'll see various downloaded able PDF.

If you want to sign up for the newsletter, we just ask for your email. We do not share your email without anybody. And again, it's completely zero cost. If you're not always following me on social media, it's huberman and lab on twitter, on facebook and on instagram and at all three of those places.

I cover topics and subject matter that are sometimes overlapping with the information covered on the huberman lab podcast, but that's often distinct from information on the huberman lab podcast. Again, its huberman in lab on all social media channels. So thank you for joining me today for our discussion about building your optimal tool kit for fitness. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.