---
title: 'Science of Muscle Growth, Increasing Strength & Muscular Recovery'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=XLr2RKoD-oY'
video_id: 'XLr2RKoD-oY'
date: 2026-07-01
duration_sec: 0
---

# Science of Muscle Growth, Increasing Strength & Muscular Recovery

> Source: [Science of Muscle Growth, Increasing Strength & Muscular Recovery](https://youtube.com/watch?v=XLr2RKoD-oY)

## Summary

This episode of the Huberman Lab Podcast, hosted by Dr. Andrew Huberman, explores the science of muscle, focusing on the critical connection between the nervous system and muscle tissue. It covers how neurons control muscle, the role of lactate in exercise, and provides science-based protocols for muscle hypertrophy, strength, and recovery. The episode aims to give listeners a deep understanding of how to optimize their neuromuscular system for better health, performance, and longevity.

### Key Points

- **Brain's Purpose is Movement** [6:30] — The whole reason for having a brain is to move. The brain controls movement through upper motor neurons, lower motor neurons, and central pattern generators.
- **Lactate is a Hero Molecule** [23:59] — Lactate is not a waste product; it buffers acidity, acts as a fuel, and serves as a hormonal signal to the heart, liver, and brain.
- **Henneman Size Principle** [35:30] — The Henneman Size Principle states that motor units are recruited from low to high threshold. You don't need heavy weights to recruit high-threshold units; working in the 30-80% of 1RM range is effective.
- **Three Stimuli for Muscle Change** [40:33] — The three stimuli for muscle change are stress, tension, and damage. Muscle growth (hypertrophy) occurs when myosin filaments get thicker.
- **Optimal Training Volume** [57:55] — For most people, 5 to 15 sets per muscle group per week, in the 30-80% of 1RM range, is effective for improving muscle strength and size.
- **CO2 Tolerance Test for Recovery** [87:06] — The CO2 tolerance test is a zero-cost, objective measure of nervous system recovery. A slow exhale time (over 60 seconds) indicates good recovery.
- **Cold and NSAIDs Blunt Gains** [95:49] — Using ice baths or anti-inflammatory drugs within four hours after resistance training can blunt the inflammatory signals needed for muscle growth and adaptation.
- **Effective Supplements: Creatine & Beta-Alanine** [105:03] — Creatine (3-15g/day depending on body weight) is well-supported to increase power output, reduce fatigue, and improve hydration. Beta-alanine (2-5g/day) improves muscular endurance for 60-242 second activities.
- **Leucine for Muscle Protein Synthesis** [112:46] — Ingesting 700-3000 mg of the essential amino acid leucine per meal supports muscle protein synthesis and repair.

## Transcript

- [Andrew Huberman] Welcome
to the Huberman Lab Podcast
where we discuss science
and science-based tools
for everyday life.
- I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm
a Professor of Neurobiology
and Ophthalmology at
Stanford School of Medicine.
This podcast is separate
from my teaching and
research roles at Stanford.
It is however, part of
my desire and effort
to bring zero cost to consumer
information about science
and science-related tools
to the general public.
In keeping with that theme,
I'd like to thank the
sponsors of today's podcast.
Our first sponsor is InsideTracker.
InsideTracker is a
personalized nutrition platform
that analyzes data from your blood and DNA
to help you better understand your body
and reach your health goals.
I've long been a fan of
getting blood work done
for the simple reason
that many of the things
that impact our immediate
and long-term health
can only be analyzed from
a quality blood test.
And now with the advent
of modern DNA tests,
we can also get insight into things
like metabolic factors
that tell us whether
or not we metabolize caffeine
well or certain proteins well,
what our fat metabolism genes are like.
Things of that sort can only be analyzed
from quality blood and DNA tests.
In addition, many of the factors
that impact our hormones,
our metabolism our brain health,
those come back in a blood and DNA test
and there are many blood
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but with InsideTracker, they
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They have this terrific
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but rather it tells you
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gives you very simple
and clear directives of changes
you might make in your diet,
changes that you might make
in your exercise regimen,
or sleep, et cetera in
order to get those markers
where they ought to be
and where you would like them to be
in order to optimize yourself.
So they make everything
very easy, start to finish.
They can even come to your home
to take the blood and
DNA tests if you like.
If you'd like to try InsideTracker
you can go to insidetracker.com/huberman.
And if you do that, you'll get 25% off
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Use the code Huberman at checkout.
Today's podcast is also brought to us
by Belcampo Meat Company.
Belcampo is a regenerative
farm in Northern California
that raises organic grass fed
and finished certified humane meats.
While I don't eat a lot of meat, when I do
I insist that that meat
be a very high quality.
How the animals were cared for
is extremely important to me
and the life that the animal
had and what it consumed
is very important to me.
So the way that I eat I've
discussed on this podcast before
but very briefly, I basically
fast until about noon,
then I eat a piece of
beef or chicken with lunch
and a salad.
So that's basically my lunch.
That's what optimizes
my levels of alertness
for work throughout the day.
Then in the evening I shift over
to eating primarily carbohydrates.
That's what allows me to sleep very well.
So I'm not eating huge volumes of meat
but am eating meat every day.
Conventionally raised animals
are confined to feed lots
and need to diet of inflammatory grains
which is bad for them and it's bad for us
when we eat their meat.
Belcampo animals graze on open pastures
and seasonal grasses resulting in meat
that is higher in
nutrients and healthy fats.
And I've talked before
about the importance
of omega-3 fatty acids for
both brain and body health
and Belcampo meats are high
in omega-3 fatty acids.
The way Belcampo raises its
animals isn't just better
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It's what's called climate
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planet and good for us.
My favorite meats from Belcampo
are the rib eye and the flank steaks.
That's typically what I eat.
I think I probably eat about three or four
of those across the week
and then I'll eat chicken
on some other days.
They're really delicious,
and as I mentioned,
they're very good for us.
You can order Belcampo
sustainably raised meats
to be delivered straight
to your door using my code
Huberman at belcampo.com/huberman.
If you do that, you'll get
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That's belcampo.com/huberman
for 20% off your first order.
Today's episode is also
brought to us by Headspace.
Headspace is a meditation app backed
by 25 published studies
and has over 600,000 five star reviews.
So I've been meditating on and off
since I was about 15, 16 years
old, mostly off at first.
What I found is that I'll sometimes
start a meditation practice but
it's very hard to stay with.
And then a few years ago
I discovered Headspace
and I started meditating more regularly.
In fact, very recently because
I've had an exorbitant amount
of work on my plate and
I've been getting less sleep
than I would like in order
to complete that work,
I've brought back a regular
meditation practice twice a day
not just my usual once a day.
Headspace makes it really easy.
They have so many meditations on there
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Right now if you want to try Headspace
you can go to headspace.com/special offer.
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I've found that staying with meditation
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for all aspects of my life.
Today's episode of the Huberman
Lab Podcast is our fourth
and final episode in this month
which is all about skills
and athletic performance.
Now, in a previous episode,
we talked about science-based
in particular neuroscience-based tools
for accelerating fat loss.
Previous to that, we talked about ways
to improve skill learning, motor movements
which also included things like music
and piano playing not
just athletic performance.
And we've also been
exploring other aspects
of physical performance
throughout the entire month.
Today I want to talk about something
that is vitally important for
not just athletic performance,
but for your entire life and
indeed for your longevity,
and that's muscle.
Now, many of you, when
you hear the word muscle
think muscle growth and
building big muscles.
And while we will touch
on muscle hypertrophy
muscle growth today, and
science-based protocols
to enhance hypertrophy,
we will mainly be talking
about muscle as it relates
to the nervous system.
And I can't emphasize this enough
the whole reason why you have a brain is
so that you can move.
And one of the things that's
exquisite and fantastic
about the human brain,
is that it can direct
all sorts of different kinds of movement,
different speeds of movement,
movement of different durations.
We can train our
musculature to lift heavier
and heavier objects or we
can train our musculature
to take us further and
further so-called endurance.
We can also build smoothness
of movement, excuse me,
smoothness of movement as
well as speed of movement,
suppleness of movement.
All of that is governed
by the relationship
between the nervous system, neurons
and their connections to muscle.
So when you hear the science of muscle
and muscle hypertrophy,
you might think, oh, well
I'm not interested in building muscle
but muscle does many critical things.
It's important for movement.
It's important for metabolism.
The more muscle you have
and not just muscle size
but the quality of muscle,
that's a real thing,
the higher your metabolism is,
and indeed the healthier you are.
It turns out that jumping ability
and ability to stand up quickly
and to get up off the floor quickly
is one of the most
predictive markers of aging
and biological aging and no
surprise that is governed
by the brain to muscle connection.
In addition, muscle and
musculature is vital for posture
and we don't talk about posture enough.
We all have been told we
need to sit up straight
or stand up straight, but
posture is vitally important
for how the rest of our body works.
It's vital to how we breathe.
It's actually even vital to
how alert or sleepy we are.
So we're going to talk about
the musculature for posture.
We also are going to talk about muscle
as it relates to aesthetic things.
Now, these are all linked.
Muscle for metabolism,
movement, posture and aesthetics
of course are linked, right?
As our posture changes,
our aesthetic changes.
As our posture and aesthetic
changes, how we move changes.
And as we improve muscle quality
whether or not that's
increasing muscle size or not,
that changes the way
that our entire system
not just our nervous system
and our muscular system
but our immune system and the
other organs of the body work.
So today, as always we're going to talk
a little bit of mechanism.
I'm going to explain how
neurons control muscle
and then we're going to
look at muscle metabolism,
how muscle uses energy.
I promise to make all of this very simple.
I'm actually going to keep it very brief
probably about 10 minutes total.
And by the end of that 10
minutes, you will understand a lot
about the neuromuscular connection,
how your brain and nervous
system control your muscle
and how those muscles work.
Then we are going to talk
about how muscles use energy
and can change how they use energy
for sake of getting stronger, if you like
for also increasing the size
so-called hypertrophy of muscle
and for improving endurance as
well as for improving posture
and how you move generally.
We will touch on some nutritional themes
and how that relates
to muscle in particular
a specific amino acid that
if it's available in your
bloodstream frequently enough,
and at sufficient levels,
can help you build
and improve the quality of muscle.
And we'll talk about
specific exercise regimes
as well as of course, supplementation
and things that can enhance
neuromuscular performance overall.
We are also going to talk about recovery.
Recovery as everybody knows,
is when things improve.
That's when neurons get
better at controlling muscle,
that's when muscle grows,
that's when muscle gets more flexible.
None of that actually
happens during training.
It happens after training and
there is a lot of confusion
about how to optimize
recovery and how to measure
whether or not you are recovered
and ready to come back in
for another neuromuscular
training session.
So we'll talk about that as well.
Today is going to have a lot of protocols
and you're going to come away
with a lot of understanding
about how you move, how you work
in these incredible organs
that we call the nervous system
and the musculature, the
so-called neuromuscular system.
Before we dive into today's topic,
I want to just take about three minutes
and cover some essential
summary of the previous episode.
In the previous episode,
we talked about fat loss.
Talked about shiver induced fat loss.
We talked about neat non-exercise
activity thermogenesis
for increasing caloric
burn and fat oxidation.
And we talked about how
to use cold specifically
to enhance fat loss.
I described a protocol
involving getting into cold
of some sort, whether or not
it's ice bath, cold shower,
some form of cold could
even be a river or an ocean
if you have access to
that and inducing shiver
and then getting out, not
crossing your arms or huddling
but allowing that cold to evaporate
off you and continuing to shiver
and then getting back into
the colder environment
of water or stream or shower, et cetera.
All of that is described
in a beautifully illustrated protocol
that I didn't illustrate.
That's why it's beautifully illustrated
at the coldplunge.com.
They've made that protocol for you
and they've made it available
free of charge for you.
So there's no obligation
there of any kind financially.
You can go to the coldplunge.com.
There's a little tab that says protocols
and you can download that
protocol, someone there
I don't know who exactly illustrated it,
and you can come away with a PDF
of what I described in
the previous episode.
So I just want to make sure
that you are aware of that resource.
The other announcement
I'd like to make is that
many of you have asked how you
can help support the podcast.
And there's a very straightforward
zero cost way to do that.
And that's to subscribe
to our YouTube channel.
So if you go to YouTube,
if you're not already
there watching this now
hits the Subscribe button
that helps us tremendously
to get the word out more
broadly about the podcast.
And we thank you for your support.
Most people, when they
hear the word muscle
they just think about strength.
But of course muscles are
involved in everything that we do.
They are involved in speaking,
they're involved in
sitting and standing up,
they're involved in lifting
objects, including ourselves.
They are absolutely essential
for maintaining how we breathe.
They're absolutely essential
for ambulation, for moving,
and for skills of any kind.
So when we think about muscle,
we don't just want to think about muscle
the meat that is muscle, but
what controls that muscle.
And no surprise what controls
muscle is the nervous system.
The nervous system does that
through three main nodes of
control areas of control.
And I've talked about these
before on a previous podcast.
So I will keep this very brief.
Basically, we have upper motor
neurons in our motor cortex.
So those are in our skull
and those are involved
in deliberate movement.
So if I decide that I'm
going to pick my pen
up and put it down, which
is what I'm doing right now,
my upper motor neurons were involved
in generating that movement.
Those upper motor
neurons send signals down
to my spinal cord where there
are two categories of neurons.
One are the lower motor neurons
and those lower motor
neurons send little wires
that we call axons out to our muscles
and cause those muscles to contract.
They do that by dumping
chemicals onto the muscle.
In fact, the chemical is acetylcholine.
I've talked before about
acetylcholine in the brain
which is vitally important for focus
and actually can gait neuroplasticity,
the brain's ability to change
in response to experience.
But in the neuromuscular system,
acetylcholine released from
motor neurons is the way
the only way that muscles can contract.
Now, there's another category of neurons
in the spinal cord called
central pattern generators
or CPGs.
And those are involved
in rhythmic movements.
Anytime we're walking or doing something
where we don't have to think about it
to do it deliberately, it's
just happening reflexively
that central pattern
generators and motor neurons.
Anytime we're doing
something deliberately,
the top-down control as we call it,
from the upper motor neurons comes in
and takes control of that system.
So it's really simple.
You've only got three ingredients.
You've got the upper motor
neurons, the lower motor neurons
and for rhythmic movements
that are reflexive,
you've also got the
central pattern generators.
So it's a terrifically
simple system at that level,
but what we're going to focus on today is
how that system can control muscle
in ways that make that system better.
Now, when I say better, I
want to be very specific.
If your goal is to build larger muscles,
there's a way to use your nervous system
to trigger hypertrophy
to increase the size
of those muscles.
And it is indeed controlled
by the nervous system.
So you can forget the idea
that the muscles have memory
or that muscles grow in
response to something
that's just happening within the muscle,
it's the nerve to muscle connection
that actually creates hypertrophy.
I'll talk exactly about how
to optimize that process.
In addition, if you want
to improve endurance
or improve flexibility or
suppleness or explosiveness,
that is all accomplished by the way
that the nervous system
engages muscles specifically.
And so what that means is
we have to ask ourselves
are we going to take control
of the upper motor neurons,
the central pattern generators,
or the lower motor neurons
or all three in order
to get to some end point
of how the nervous system controls muscle.
So neurophysiology 101.
I'll give you one piece of history
because it's important to know.
Sherrington, who won the Nobel prize
called movement, the final common path.
Why did he say that?
Well, the whole reason for
having a nervous system
the whole reason for having a brain is
so that we can control our
movements in very dedicated ways.
That is one of the reasons,
perhaps the predominant reason
why the human brain is so large.
You might think, oh it's
so large for thinking
and for creativity.
Ah, no when you look at
the amount of real estate
in the brain that's devoted
to different aspects of life,
it's mainly vision, our ability to see
and movement, our ability to engage
in lots of different kinds of movements.
Slow movements, fast movements,
explosive, et cetera.
Other animals don't have that ability
because they don't have
the mental real estate.
They don't have the neural
real estate in their brain.
They have neuromuscular junctions.
They have central pattern generators
what they don't have
are these incredible upper motor neurons
that can direct activity the
muscles in very specific ways.
So we can all feel blessed
that we have this system.
And today I'm going to teach
you how to use that system
toward particular end points.
So if we decide that we are
going to direct our muscles
in some particular movement of any kind.
Whether or not it's a
weightlifting exercise,
or whether it's a yoga movement
or simply picking up
and putting down a pen,
we are engaging flexors and extensors
and our body is covered with
flexors and extensors all over.
So for instance, our bicep is a flexor
and our tricep is an extensor.
Those are what are called
antagonistic muscles.
They move the limbs in
opposite directions.
So if you bring your wrist
closer to your shoulder,
that's flection using your bicep.
If you move your wrist further
away from your shoulder,
that's extension, using your tricep.
And without getting into a lot of detail
the way that the nerves and
brain are wired up to muscle
make it such that when
a flexor is activated,
when the nerve dumps
chemical acetylcholine
onto the muscle to activate the biceps,
the triceps is inhibited.
It's prevented from engaging.
There are ways to bypass this
but that's the typical mode of action.
The converse is also true when
our tricep is in activated,
when we move our wrist
away from our shoulder
our bicep is inhibited.
And we have flexors like
our abdominal muscles.
And we have extensors in our lower back.
Many of you probably know this
but some of you probably
don't that your spine
has flexors to move basically
your chin toward your waist.
And it has, those are your
abdominal muscles among others.
And you have extensors that
move your chin, basically back
like looking up toward the ceiling.
And those are your extensors.
You have other muscles that
are stabilizing muscles
and things of that sort
but those movements of
flection and extension,
and the fact that they are
what we call reciprocally
innovated or mutual inhibition,
you hear different language around this
is characteristic of most
of our limb movements.
So hamstring and quadriceps,
the hamstring brings the ankle
closer back towards the glutes.
Basically it's lifting your heel up
which is almost always
done toward the back.
Whereas your quadriceps is the extensor
opposite to the hamstrings.
So you get the idea.
So there's flexors and extensors
and it's the neurons that
control those flexors
and extensors that allow us
to move in particular ways.
So, now you have heard a
neuromuscular physiology
in its simplest form, but I
do want this to be accessible.
I want to get just briefly, just briefly
into some of the underlying metabolism
of how muscles use and create energy.
Because in doing that, we
will be in a great position
to understand all the
tools that follow about
how to optimize the neuromuscular system
for your particular goals.
So in the previous episode about fat loss,
we talked about lipolysis.
The breakdown of fat into fatty acids
so it can be used as fuel.
And it ended in a step where we got ATP,
which is the bottleneck
and final common path
for all energy producing
functions in the body.
There are other ways but basically ATP
is the key element there.
Now with muscles, they don't
function on fats normally
what they are going to function
on their ability to move
and their ability to do
things and allow us to move
in any way that we want to,
is based on a process of glycolysis,
the breakdown of things like glycogen
and glucose into energy.
And it's a very simple process.
You don't have to know any chemistry.
So if I say the words carbon or hydrogen
or something like that, don't freak out.
You don't have to
understand any chemistry.
But basically what
happens is you've got this
available sugar resource
that stored in muscle.
And that's glucose.
And that glucose has six carbons
and six waters, basically.
That can be broken down into
two sets of three carbons.
All right.
So basically you take
glucose and you break it
into these two little batches of carbons
that we call pyruvate.
So six divided by two is three.
So you get three and three pyruvate.
And that generates a
little bit of ATP of energy
but just a little bit.
Now, if there's oxygen available,
if there's sufficient oxygen there,
what can happen is that
pyruvate can be brought
to the mitochondria and
through a whole set of things
that you probably don't
want to hear about right now
like the electron transport
chain and citric acid cycle.
What happens is it's broken
down and you get 28 to 30 ATP,
which has a lot of ATP.
So the only things you need to know,
the only things you need
to know about this process
is that glucose and glycogen
are broken down into pyruvate.
You a little bit of energy from that.
And when I say energy, I
mean the ability to move.
It's fuel, literally just gets burned up.
But if there's oxygen
available and that's key
then within the mitochondria,
you can create 28 to 30 ATP
which is a lot of ATP.
Now, what does this mean?
This means that movement of muscle
is metabolically expensive
and indeed compared
to other tissues compared
to fat, compared to bone,
compared to almost all other
tissues, except brain tissue
muscle is the most metabolically demanding
which is why people who
have more muscle relative
to adipose tissue to
fat, they can eat more
and they're more of a furnace.
They just kind of burn that up.
So even if you didn't understand
anything that I just said,
what you probably did hear,
and that I hope you heard
is that if you have oxygen
around, you can create energy
from this fuel source that
we call glycogen and glucose.
But what if there isn't oxygen around?
And what is that like?
Well, you've experienced that.
I'm not talking about
oxygen in the environment.
I'm talking about oxygen in the muscle.
So if you've ever carried
a box while moving,
or you're carrying heavy
groceries to the car,
or you're exercising particularly hard
and you felt the burn, well, that burning
which most people think is
lactic acid is actually a process
by which pyruvate, which as I said before
normally could be converted
into ATP if there's oxygen,
well, if there's not enough oxygen
'cause that muscle is
working too hard or too long,
what ends up happening is that
a hydrogen molecule comes in there
and you get something called lactate.
So believe it or not, humans
don't make lactic acid.
That's another species, we make lactate.
And we hear that lactate is bad.
We need to buffer the
burn or avoid the burn.
That lactic acid and
lactate are what prevent us
for performing as well
as we ought to be able to
or going as far as we possibly could
in an endurance event.
Guess what, that's not true at all.
Lactate has three functions,
all of which are really
interesting and really important.
First of all, it's a
buffer against acidity.
You don't want muscle to get too acidic
because it can't function.
You don't want any body
tissue to get too acidic.
So that burn that you feel is
acidity in that environment
and lactate what most
people call lactic acid,
but again, we don't make lactic acid.
Lactate is there to buffer that
to reduce the amount of burn.
So, most people have
this exactly backwards.
So when you feel that burn
that is not lactic acid,
that is lactate that's
present to suppress the burn,
to suppress acidity.
It's also a fuel.
When you feel that burn,
lactate is shuttled to
those areas of the muscle,
and there's an actual fuel burning process
where in the absence of oxygen
you can continue to generate
muscular contractions.
Now, this is informative
'cause it also tells us that
that burning that acidity that we feel
can inhibit the way that our muscles work
but that lactate comes
in and allows our muscles
to continue to function.
So we'll talk a little bit more about
what this whole lactate
thing and the burn means
but it's a really important process.
And it's amazing to me that
most people understand it
in exactly the incorrect way.
They think a lactic acid
is bad and the burn is bad.
No, it reveals a number
of really important things
are going on with this
vital molecule lactate,
which can reduce acidity, reduce the burn
as well as act as a fuel.
Now, here's where it
gets really, really cool.
And if you don't have enough
of an incentive to exercise
based on all the information out there
about how it'll make you live longer
and make your heart better, et cetera,
here's a reason that regardless
of what kind of exercise you do,
if it's weight training, or
running, or cycling, or swimming
that every once in a while,
about 10% of the time
you should exercise to
the point of intensity
where you start to feel
that so-called burn.
The reason for that is
that lactate shows up
to the site of the burn, so to speak,
and it acts as a hormonal
signal for other organs
of the body in a very positive way.
As you may recall, from
a very early episode
of the Huberman Lab
Podcast, I talked about
what a hormone is and how it works.
We have lots of different
kinds of hormones
but hormones are chemicals that
are released in one location
in the body and travel,
have effects on lots
of other organs of the body.
So when I say that lactate
acts as a hormonal signal,
what I mean is that it's in a
position to influence tissues
that are outside of the muscle.
And basically it can send signals
to the heart, to the
liver and to the brain,
and it can have effects
on the heart, the liver
and the brain that are very positive.
So just to zoom out for a second
I promise we won't get any
more technical than this.
We will get into tools and protocols
that are really straightforward
but what I'm telling you is that
if you feel a burn from a
particular exercise or movement,
that burn is going to be buffered
by this molecule we call lactate.
Lactate will then provide additional fuel
for additional work.
So this is a good incentive
provided you can do it safely
to "Work through the burn."
That burn acts as a beacon to the lactate
which comes in and allows
you to do more work.
It's not a signal to stop necessarily.
I mean, stop if you're
doing something unsafe
but it's a signal that
lactate should come in
and allow you to continue to do work.
And it can act as a hormonal signal.
Lactate can then travel to the heart
and to the liver and to the brain
and can enhance their
function in positive ways,
not just in those moments,
but in the period of time that follows.
So many people are curious
about how they can exercise
to make their brain better.
That's one of the most
common questions I get.
What I'm telling you is that
provided you can do it safely
by engaging the so-called burn
which is at a different
threshold for everybody,
your hill run will be
different than my hill run
to generate the burn,
but provided you can do that for about 10%
of your workouts or of
an individual workout,
or activity of any kind, you
are generating the activity
of this lactate based hormonal signal
that can improve the function of neurons.
And it does that if you want
to know for the aficionados
by improving the function
of another cell type
called the astrocytes which
are a glial cell type.
Which are very involved in clearance
of debris from the brain,
they're involved in the
formation of synopsis
connections between neurons in the brain.
So put simply, if you are an exerciser
if you're doing movement of
any kind, and you're interested
in allocating some of that
movement toward enhancing
brain, heart and liver
health, there is a nice set
of scientific data that points to the fact
that getting a lactate
shuttled to the muscles
by engaging this burning
sensation is advantageous
for the health of those other tissues.
So, as I mentioned that burn is present
from lack of oxygen being present.
And then the hydrogen comes
in and you get this lactate.
But this process of
lactate acting as a buffer
of fuel and a positive hormonal
signal for other tissues,
occurs only if there's oxygen.
So if you feel the burn,
you definitely want to focus
on your breathing at that point.
That would be the time
to take deep inhales
and try and bring more
oxygen into your system.
It's definitely not a
time to hold your breath.
And if ever you've run to
the point of feeling the burn
and then you were exercised
in any way on the treadmill
or on the bike or whatever,
and felt that burn,
and then you held your breath,
it feels much more intense.
By breathing you bring lactate to the site
and you are able to
allow lactate to act more
as a buffer, a fuel,
and a hormonal signal.
And the reason I brought this up today is
because as I mentioned so
many people are interested
in using exercise not just for sake
of improving physical health
and wellbeing and performance,
but also for enhancing their brain.
And there are a lot of
data out there speaking
to the findings that
exercise of various kinds
can increase neurogenesis,
the creation of new neurons.
Well, the unfortunate news is that
while that's true in mice,
there is very little evidence
for enhanced neurogenesis
from exercise or otherwise in humans.
There's a little bit,
and there are a few sites
within the brain, such
as the dentate gyrus
of the hippocampus, which may be involved
in the formation of new
memories, to be clear
the dentate gyrus is definitely involved
in the formation of new memories,
whether or not the new
neurons that are added there
in humans are involved in new memories.
The evidence for that
is weak at best, frankly
whereas an animals the
data are quite strong,
but most of the data points to the fact
that hormonal signals,
things that are transported
in the blood during exercise
are beneficial for the brain
and that those signals are
not causing the increase
in the number of neurons in
the dentate gyrus or otherwise.
That it's more about the
health of the connections
between the neurons growth
factors of various kinds
things like IGF-1, there's
a long list of these things.
So if you've heard the
exercise increases the number
of neurons in your brain,
well, that's not true.
And that probably is a good thing, frankly
because we always hear
more neurons, more neurons
as if it's a good thing, but
the brain doesn't do so well
with bringing in entirely new elements.
It has a hard time negotiating that
and making use of those new elements.
We know about this from things
like the cochlear implant
where deaf people are given a device
where they suddenly can hear.
Some people really like that,
deaf people really like that
and can benefit from it.
Other deaf people find
that it's very intrusive.
That is hard to take an existing
neural circuit in the brain
and incorporate a lot of
new information into it.
So new neurons, as great as that sounds
more neurons, more neurons,
it actually might not be the best way
for the nervous system to
change and modify itself
and to promote its own longevity.
So when I tell you not such great evidence
from new neurons past puberty,
that's what the data
really show in humans.
And I sort of knocked back the data
on exercise and neurogenesis,
don't let that depress you.
If you have dementia in your family,
don't translate that into necessarily
that you will develop dementia.
Understand the exercise
is still beneficial
for the brain and other
aspects of the nervous system
but that it's going to be doing it
through these hormonal signals.
Things like IGF-1, things
like this lactate pathway
when you experience
the burn from exercise.
And again, you don't want to try
and get this feeling of a burn
throughout the entire episode of exercise,
there'll be far too intense and
would inhibit your recovery.
I don't think it'd be good
for performance either.
It's only about 10% of your total effort
in any one exercise about
that's going to give you
this positive effect.
So now you know how to
devote a small portion
of your exercise, 10% in
order for muscle and lactate
to benefit other tissues
namely your heart, your
liver, and your brain.
I'd now like to shift our attention
to how to use specific aspects
of muscular contraction
to improve muscle
hypertrophy, muscle growth,
as well as improving muscle strength.
There are a lot of reasons
to want to get stronger.
And I should just mention
that it's not always the case
that getting stronger involves
muscles getting bigger.
There are ways for muscles to get stronger
without getting bigger.
However, increasing the size of a muscle
almost inevitably increases
the strength of that muscle
at least to some degree.
Reasons why most everyone should want
to get their muscles stronger is that
muscles are generally
getting progressively weaker
across the lifespan.
So when I say getting
stronger, it's not necessarily
about being able to move increasing mounts
of weight in the gym.
Although if that's your goal
what I'm about to discuss
will be relevant to that,
but rather to offset some of
the normal decline in strength
and posture and the ability
to generate a large range
of movement safely, that occurs as we age.
As I mentioned at the
beginning of the episode
we just tend to lose function
in this neuromuscular system
as we get older.
And doing things to offset that
has been shown again and
again, to be beneficial
for the neuromuscular system
for protection of injury,
for enhancing the strength
of bones and bone density.
So there are a lot of reasons
to use resistance exercise
that extend far beyond just the desire
to increase muscle size
because I know many
of you are interested in
increasing muscle size,
but many of you are not.
So there's an important
principle of muscle physiology
called the Henneman size principle.
And the Henneman size
principle essentially says
that we recruit what
are called motor units.
Motor units are just the connections
between nerve and muscle from in a pattern
that staircases from low
threshold to high threshold.
What this means is when you
pick up something that is light,
you're going to use the
minimum amount of nerve
to muscle energy in
order to move that thing.
Likewise, when you pick
up an object that's heavy,
you're going to use the
minimum amount of nerve
to muscle connectivity and energy
in order to move that object.
So it's basically a conservation
of energy principle.
Now, if you continue to
exert effort of movement,
what will happen is you will tend
to recruit more and more
motor units with time.
And that process of
recruiting more neurons,
more lower motor neurons
if you recall from the
beginning of the episode,
these lower motor neurons
are in our spinal cord
and they actually dump a
chemical acetylcholine on muscle,
caused the muscles to contract.
As you recruit more and
more of these motor units,
these connections between these
lower motor neurons and muscle,
that's when you start to
get changes in the muscle.
That's when you open the
gate for the potential
for the muscles to get
stronger and to get larger,
if that's what your goal is.
And so the way this process works
has been badly misunderstood
in the kind of online
literature of weight training
and bodybuilding, and
even in sports physiology.
The Henneman size principle is kind of
a foundational principle
within muscle physiology
but many people have come
to interpret it by saying
that the way to recruit
high threshold motor units,
the ones that are hard to get to
is to just use heavy weights.
And that's actually not the case
as we'll talk about the research supports
that weights in a very large
range of sort of a percentage
of your maximum, anywhere from 30% to 80%.
So weights that are not very
light but are moderately light,
too heavy can cause
changes in the connections
between nerve and muscle that lead
to muscle strength and muscle hypertrophy.
Put differently, heavyweights
can help build muscle
and strength but they are not required.
What one has to do is adhere
to a certain number of parameters,
just a couple of key variables
that I'll spell out for you.
And if you do that, you can greatly
increase muscle hypertrophy, muscle size
and or muscle strength if
that's what you want to do.
And you don't necessarily
have to use heavy weights
in order to do that.
Now, I'm sure the power lifters
and the people that like to
move heavy weights around
will say, no, if you want to get strong
you absolutely have to lift heavy weights.
And that might be true if
you want to get very strong
but for most people who are interested
in supporting their muscular
such that they offset
any age related decline in strength,
or in increasing hypertrophy
and strength to some degree,
there really isn't a need
to lie about the Henneman size principle
which many people out there are doing
and claiming that you absolutely need
to use the heaviest weights possible
in order to build strength and muscle.
So I'm going to explain all
of this works in simple terms.
So first of all, let's just
talk about what hypertrophy is
and what strength changes
in the muscle are.
We can make this very simple as well.
If this were a muscle physiology class
we would talk all about myofibrils
and sarcomeres and all that stuff.
We're not going to do that.
That's not the purpose
of today's conversation.
If you're interested in that
as well as a lot of the other information
that I'm going to discuss in more detail,
I highly encourage you to
check out the YouTube channel
and the writings of Dr. Andy Galpin.
He's a PhD and a full professor
in exercise physiology.
He's extremely knowledgeable
in this entire area
of science-based tools for hypertrophy,
how strength and hypertrophy really work.
His lab does everything
from biopsy on muscles,
working with athletes and
typical folks as well.
A lot of the information
that you're going to hear
from me in the next 15 minutes or so
comes from an extensive
exploration of the work
that he and his colleagues
have done as well
as folks like Brad Schoenfeld,
another academic who's superb
in this whole space of muscle physiology
and from a lengthy conversation
that I had with Andy,
Dr. Galpin prior to this episode.
So if we want to think
about muscle hypertrophy,
we have to ask what is changing
when muscles get larger or stronger.
And there are really just three ways
that muscles can be stimulated to change.
So let's review those three ways
and talk about what
happens inside the muscle.
So there are three major stimulate
for changing the way that muscle works
and making muscles stronger,
larger, or better in some way.
And those are stress, tension, and damage.
Those three things don't
necessarily all have to be present
but stress of some kind has to exist.
Something has to be different
in the way that the nerve communicates
with the muscle and the way
that the muscle contracts
or performs that makes
the muscle need to change.
So this is very reminiscent of
neuroplasticity in the brain.
Something needs to happen.
Certain chemicals need to be present.
Certain processes need to happen
or else a tissue simply
won't change itself.
But if those processes
and events do happen,
then the tissue has
essentially no option except,
but to change.
So muscles move, as I mentioned
because nerves dump
chemical onto the muscles
but they move because they
have these things called myosin
and actin filaments.
And if you want to read up on this,
you can look on the internet
you can put the sliding filament theory
of muscle contraction if you
really want to go deep down
that rabbit hole.
It's interesting.
You can learn about this in
a muscle physiology class.
But basically, along
the length of the muscle
you have, what's called myosin.
And just think of myosin
as kind of like a wire.
It's like a bunch of beads and wires
that extend across the muscle.
I think that's the simplest
way to describe it.
And the myosin is surrounded
by these little beads called actin.
The way muscles get bigger is
that basically the myosin gets thicker.
It's a protein and it gets thicker.
So put this in your mind
if you're listening to this
or even if you're watching it on YouTube,
the way to think about this
whole actin myosin thing
and thing and muscles
getting bigger is imagine
that you're holding a bouquet of balloons,
a bunch of balloons by their strings
except you're not holding the
strings all at their bottom.
So the bouquet isn't nicely arranged.
It's not like some balloons
that are all up at the top
and you're holding the
strings down at the bottom.
Imagine that one of the
balloons that is very close
to your hand and other one
is a little bit higher up.
And so this bouquet is very disorganized.
In other words, the string
extending out of your hand
the strings rather
extending out of your hand
are all different lengths.
And so the balloons
are all over the place.
That's essentially what myosin
looks like in the muscle.
And those strings are what
we call the filaments,
and then the myosin head is the balloon.
When you stress a muscle properly,
or you give it sufficient tension,
or you damage the muscle just enough,
there's an adaptive
response that takes place
where protein is synthesized.
And it's a very specific
protein, it's myosin.
The myosin gets thicker.
In other words, the balloons get bigger.
So the way to think about muscle growth
and the way to think about
muscles getting stronger is
that those balloons get bigger
and the muscle gets thicker.
Now, the question then should be as always
how does that happen?
I mean, the muscle doesn't
really know anything
about what's happening
in the outside world.
The way it happens is
the nerve, the neuron has
to tell the muscle to get stronger.
And it does that through what
we call a signaling cascade.
It talks to the muscle
in terms of chemicals.
It doesn't whisper to it or
shout or Hey, get bigger.
What it does it release
a certain chemicals
that within the muscle,
there are certain
chemicals released rather
that make those balloons
as I'm referring to them,
the myosin get thicker.
So let's talk about the
stimulus for doing that.
And if already in your
mind, you're imagining
oh my goodness, these balloons of muscle
are going to get thick,
thick, thick, thick, thick,
and it's just going to
spiral out of control,
don't worry about that.
People invest a ton of time and energy
into trying to make their muscles larger.
It's actually much harder for people to do
than you might think.
But I do want to give one
exception because it illustrates
an important principle of
where we're headed next.
Everybody has imbalances
in how muscles can grow.
How well muscles can grow, or how poorly,
or how challenging it is
for their muscles to grow.
Now, many people who are afraid
of like getting too bulky
for instance, are afraid
of lifting weights.
But I think the research
shows now that every one
of pretty much every age should be doing
some sort of resistance exercise
even if that's body weight exercises
in order to offset this
age-related decline
in muscle contractile ability,
muscle strength, et cetera,
improve bone density.
There's nothing good about
getting frail and weak over time.
And people who invest the effort
into doing resistance
exercises of some kind
whether or not it's with
bands or with weights
or with body weight,
really benefit tremendously
at a whole body level at a systemic level
as well as in terms of muscle strength.
There is a good predictor of how well
or how efficient you will
be in building the strength
and or if you like the
size of a given muscle.
And it has everything to do
with those upper motor neurons
that are involved in
deliberate control of muscle.
You can actually do this test right now.
You can just kind of March
across your body mentally
and see whether or not you
can independently contract any
or all of your muscles.
So for instance, if you
are sitting in a chair
or a you're standing,
see whether or not you can
contract your calf muscle
just using those upper motor
neuron, sending a signal down
and deliberately
isolating the calf muscle.
If you can contract the calf muscle hard
to the point where that
muscle almost feels
like it's starting to cramp
like it hurts just a little bit,
that can be extremely painful
nor is it going to have
no sensation whatsoever,
chances are you have very good
upper motor neuron to calf control.
And chances are, if you can isolate that
what they call the brain
or mind muscle connection,
and you can contract the muscles
to the point where it cramps a little bit,
that you hold a decent to high potential
to change the strength and
the size of that muscle
if you train it properly.
Now, if you have a hard time doing that,
chances are you won't be able to do that.
If for instance, you
focus on your back muscle.
Like we all have these
muscles called the lat.
The latissimus dorsi muscles,
which basically are involved
in chin ups and things like that,
but their function from a more
of a kinesiology standpoint
is to move the elbow back behind the body.
So it's not about flexing your bicep.
It's about moving your
elbow back behind your body.
If you can do that, mentally
or you can do that physical movement
of moving your elbow back behind your body
and you can contract that muscle hard,
chances are that you have the capacity
to enhance the strength and or size
of that particular muscle
because you have the neural
control of that muscle.
This is a key feature of
the neuromuscular system
to appreciate as we begin to talk more
about specific protocols.
Because everything about
muscle hypertrophy,
about stimulating muscle growth is
about generating isolated contractions
about challenging specific
muscles in a very unnatural way.
Whereas with strength, it's
about using musculature
as a system moving
weights, moving resistance,
moving the body.
The specific goal of hypertrophy is
to isolate specific
nerve to muscle pathways
so that you stimulate the chemical
and signaling transduction
events in muscle
so that those muscles
respond by getting larger.
So there's a critical distinction
in terms of getting stronger versus trying
to get muscles to be
larger hypertrophy per se.
And it has to do with how much
you isolate those muscles.
Muscle isolation is not
a natural phenomenon.
It's not something that we normally do.
When we walk we don't think,
okay, right calf contract,
left calf contract.
No, you just generate
those rhythmic movements.
And of course, there's no
reason for them to get stronger
or larger in response to those movements.
Let's say you were to do a
kind of strange experiment
of attaching 30 pound
weights to your ankles.
And you were to do those movements.
Well, if you weren't specifically
contracting your calves
in each step, there's
no reason for the calves
to take on the bulk of the work.
And you would distribute that
work across your hip flexors
and other aspects of your musculature.
Your whole nervous system
seeks to gain efficiency.
It seeks to spread out the effort.
So you can nest this as
a principle for yourself
which is if you want to get stronger
it's really about moving
progressively greater loads
or increasing the amount
of weight that you move.
Whereas if you're specifically interested
in generating hypertrophy,
it's all about trying
to generate those really hard,
almost painful localized
contractions of muscle.
Now, of course, how much weight you use
in order to generate those contractions
will also impact hypertrophy.
But I think most people
don't really understand
the mind muscle connection.
It sounds like a great thing,
but it's actually one of
the things you want to avoid
if your goal is simply
to become more supple
or to become stronger.
You want to do the movements
properly and safely, of course
but it's the opposite of hypertrophy
where with hypertrophy
you're really trying to make
that particular muscle
sometimes two muscles
do the majority, if not all the work
whereas in moving force loads
in trying to generate activity of any kind
like lifting a bar, doing
a chin up or something
those so-called compound
movements involve a lot
of muscle groups.
If your goal is to be better at those,
you want to avoid isolating
any one particular muscle.
Now, I know this probably comes across
as a kind of obvious duh,
especially to the folks
who have spent a lot of time in the gym
aimed at getting hypertrophy.
But I think most people don't appreciate
that it's the nerve to muscle connections
and the distinction
between isolating nerve
to muscle connections
versus distributing the work
of nerve to muscle connections,
that's vital in determining whether or not
you generate hypertrophy isolated nerve
to muscle contractions versus strength
and offsetting strength loss
which would be distributed
nerve to muscle connections.
If ever there was an
area of practical science
that was very confused,
very controversial,
and almost combative at times,
it would be this issue
of how best to train.
I suppose the only thing
that's even more barbed wire
of a conversation than that
is how best to eat for health.
Those seem to be the two most common areas
of online battle and the
scientific literature
has a lot to say about
both of those things.
Again, my sources for
what I'm about to tell you
are Professor Andy Galpin and colleagues.
I know there are other
excellent people out there
in the field, but I really trust his work.
He does very controlled studies.
He spent a lot of time in this space
and what's really exciting is that
in just the last three years or so,
there's been a tremendous
amount of information
to come out about the practical
steps that one can take
in order to maximize the benefits
of resistance exercise of any kind.
So I'm going to talk about those
and I'm going to talk about the research.
I will provide some links,
a couple of the more
in-depth tutorials from
Dr. Galpin, as well as some
of the papers that the
information I'm about
to tell you stems from.
There's a lot of information saying
that you need to move
weights that are 80 to 90%
of your one rep maximum
or 70%, or cycle that
for three weeks on and then
go to more moderate weights.
There are a lot of
paths as some people say
there are a lot of ways to
add up numbers to get a 100.
There's a near infinite number of ways
to add up different
numbers to get to a 100.
And what's very clear now
from all the literature that's transpired
and especially from the literature
in this last three years,
is that once you know roughly
your one repetition maximum,
the maximum amount of
weight that you can perform
an exercise with for one repetition
in good form, full range of motion,
that it's very clear that moving weights
or using bands or using
body weight, for instance
in the 30% to 80% of one-rep maximum.
That is going to be the
most beneficial range
in terms of muscle
hypertrophy and strength.
So muscle growth and strength.
And there will be a bias
if you're moving weights
that are in the 75%, 80% range
or maybe even going above that 85 and 90%,
you're going to bias your improvements
towards strength gains.
This is true.
And if you use weights that are in the 30%
of your one-repetition
maximum or 40% or 50%
and doing many more
repetitions, of course,
then you are biasing towards hypertrophy
and what some people like
to call muscle endurance.
But that's a little bit
of a complicated term
because endurance, we almost
always think of as relating
to running or swimming or
some long bouts of activity.
So 30% to 80% of one-repetition maximums,
it doesn't really seem to matter
for sake of hypertrophy,
except at the far ends
when you're really trying
to bias for strength.
Now, it is clear, however
that one needs to perform those sets
to failure where you can't
perform another repetition
in good form again or near to failure.
And there's all sorts of
interesting nomenclature
that's popping up all over the internet.
Some of which is scientific,
some of which is not scientific
about how you are supposed to perceive
how close you were to failure, et cetera.
But there are some very
interesting principles
that relate to how the
nerves connect to the muscles
that strongly predict
whether or not this exercise
that you're performing will
be beneficial for you or not.
So here's how it goes.
For individuals that are untrained
meaning they have been
doing resistance exercise
for anywhere from zero,
probably out to about two years,
although for some people, it
might be zero to one year,
but those are the so-called beginners.
They're sort of untrained.
For those people, the
key parameter seems to be
to perform enough sets of a given exercise
per muscle per week.
The same is also true for
people that have been training
for one or two years or more.
What differs is how many sets to perform
depending on whether or not
you're trained or untrained.
So let's say you're somebody
who's been doing some
resistance exercise kind of
on and off over the years
and you decide you want
to get serious about
that for sake of sport
or offsetting age related
declines in strength,
the range of sets to do in
order to improve strength
to activate these cascades
in the muscle ranges anywhere
from two, believe it
or not to 20 per week.
Again, these are sets per week
and they don't necessarily
all have to be performed
in the same weight training session.
I will talk about numbers of sessions.
So it appears that five sets
per week in this 30% to 80%
of the one repetition maximum range,
getting close to failure,
or occasionally actually
going to full muscular
failure, which isn't really
full muscular failure, but the inability
to generate a contraction of the muscle
or move the weight in good form.
I'll go deeper into that in a moment.
But about five sets per
week is what's required
just to maintain your muscle.
So think about that.
If you're somebody who's kind of averse
to resistance training,
you are going to lose
muscle size and strength.
Your metabolism will drop.
Your posture will get worse.
Everything in the context of nerve
to muscle conductivity
will get worse over time,
unless you are generating
five sets or more
of this 30% to 80% of your one
repetition maximum per week.
So what this means is
for the typical person
who hasn't done a lot of weight training,
you need to do at least
five sets per muscle group.
Now, that's just to maintain.
And then there's this huge range
that goes all the way up to 15
and in some case, 20 sets per week.
Now, how many sets you
perform is going to depend
on the intensity of the
work that you perform.
This is where it gets a
little bit controversial
but I think nowadays most people agree
and Dr. Galpin confirmed
that 10% not to be confused
with the 10% we discussed
earlier, but 10% of the sets
of a given workout or
10% of workouts overall
should be of the high-intensity sort
where one is actually
working to muscular failure.
Now I say not true muscular failure
because in theory you
have a concentric movement
which is the kind of
lifting of the weight,
and then you have the ecentric portion
of muscle contraction,
which is the lowering.
And ecentric movements because of the way
that muscle fibers lengthen
and that sliding act myosin
that we talked about before,
you're always stronger
in lowering something
than you are in lifting it.
But the point being that
most of your training
most of your sets should
be not to failure.
And the reason for that is it
allows you to do more volume
of work without fatiguing
the nervous system
and depleting the nerve
to muscle connection
in ways that are detrimental.
So we can make this simple.
Perform anywhere from 5 to 15 sets
of resistance exercise per week,
and that's per muscle, and
that's in this 30% to 80%
of what your one-repetition maximum.
That seems to be the most
scientifically supported way
of offsetting any decline
in muscle strength
if you're working in the
kind of five set range
and in increasing muscle strength
when you start to get up
into the 10 and 15 set range.
Now, the caveat to that is everyone varies
and muscles vary in terms
of their recover ability.
Depending on how well you
can control the contraction
of muscles deliberately.
And you can actually figure
that out by sort of marching,
you might take five minutes
and just kind of March across your body
and mentally try and
control the contractions
of muscles in a very deliberate way
to the point where you can
generate a hard contraction.
And you may have to move a limb
in order to do this, by the way.
I'm not talking about just
mentally contracting your bicep
without moving your wrist.
I'm talking about doing
that without any weight
in hand or any band or any resistance.
If you can generate a
high intensity contraction
using these upper motor neuron
to lower motor neuron pathways to muscle,
you might think, well I
should perform many more sets.
But actually, the opposite is true.
If you can generate high-intensity
muscular contractions
using your brain, using your neurons,
it will take fewer sets in
order to stimulate the muscle
to maintain itself and
to stimulate the muscle
in order to grow or get stronger.
So the more efficient you are
in recruiting motor units,
remember, Henneman's size principle
the recruit men have more motor units
which isn't just muscles,
it's nerve to muscle connections.
The better you are at doing that, the more
you will recruit these so-called
high threshold motor units
the ones that are hard to get to,
the more you will kick
off the cascades of things
within muscle that stimulate
muscle growth and strength.
So if you have muscles that
are challenging to contract,
it's going to take more sets
in order to stimulate the desired effect
in those muscles not fewer.
If you have muscles that you are very good
at generating force within,
it's going to take fewer sets.
Now, how many sets you are
going to have to determine that
it's going to depend for
those of you that are using
like 50% of your one-repetition maximum,
because you're doing a lot of repetitions,
you might find that
three or four, five sets
will maintain the muscle.
You might decide to do that once
at one point in the week
and then do it again.
So if you're going for 10 sets a week
you can divide that among two sessions.
You could do that all in one session.
The data really show it doesn't matter.
There are some differences in terms of
whether or not you're trying
to generate maximum intensity
within a workout or whether or not
you want to spread that out.
But in general, resistance workouts
of any kind tend to be best favored
by workouts that are somewhere
between 45 minutes and 60 minutes.
And generally not longer than 60 minutes
because that's when all
the things like cortisol
and some of the inflammatory
pathways really start
to create a situation in
the muscle and in the body
that's not so great for you.
So it's not a hard and fast rule.
The ax doesn't drop at 60 minutes
but it's pretty clear
that performing this five
to 15 sets per week, whether
or not it's in one workout
or whether that's divided
up across multiple workouts
is really what's going
to be most beneficial.
And please do keep in mind
Henneman's size principle
and the recruitment of motor units.
And remember the better you are
at contracting particular muscles
in an isolating those muscles,
the fewer sets likely you need to do
in order to get the desired effect.
Now, what about people who
have been training for a while?
If you're somebody who's been doing
weight training for a while,
the data points to the fact
that more volume can be
beneficial, even for muscles
that you are very
efficient at contracting.
Now, the curve on this, the graph on this
begins again at about five sets per week
for maintaining a given muscle group,
and extends all the way out
to 25 or 30 sets per week.
However, there are individuals
who for whatever reason
can generate so much force.
They're so good at training muscles
that they can generate so
much force in just four
or six or eight sets that
doing this large volume
of work is actually going
to be counterproductive.
So everyone needs to
figure out for themselves.
First of all, how often you're willing
to do resistance exercise of any kind.
And again, it doesn't
matter if you're using bands
or weights or body weight.
For instance, if you're
doing chin-ups chances are
unless you are very strong
that you're not using weights.
You're just using something
that you can hold onto.
Or if you're doing pushups,
some of you will be working
in that 30% to 80% of your
one-repetition maximum range.
It doesn't necessarily mean
that you have to be moving
weights in a gym for instance.
So the purpose here is to figure out
what muscles you're trying to train.
That's an issue that we'll
talk about in a moment.
And then it does appear that somewhere
between five and 15 sets
per week is going to be
the thing that's going
to work for most people.
Now, this is based on a
tremendous amount of work
that was done by Andy
Galpin and colleagues,
Brad Schoenfeld and colleagues
and others, Mike Roberts.
There's a huge group of people
out there doing exercise
physiology and a small subset
of them that are linking them
back to real-world protocols
that don't just pertain to athletes.
So that's mainly what
I'm focusing on today.
And surely there will be exceptions.
Now, if you are going to
divide the sets across the week
you're not going to do
all 10 sets for instance
for a given muscle group in one session,
then of course, it's imperative
that the muscles recover
in between sessions.
And we are going to talk about recovery
both at the systemic level,
the whole nervous system
and at the local level the nerve to muscle
and local even muscle level.
We'll talk about that in about 10 minutes
when we talk about recovery.
I do want to mention
something very important
which is that everything
I'm referring to here
it has to do with full range of motion.
And you might ask, well, what
about the speeds of movements?
This is actually turns out
to be a really interesting dataset
for generating explosiveness and speed.
So for sprinters or throwing sports,
or for people that want to
generate a lot of jumping power,
it does appear that
learning to move weights
as fast as you safely can,
especially under moderate
to heavy loads, can increase
explosiveness and speed.
And most of that effect is
from changes in the neurons.
It's not from changes in the muscle.
It's from changes in the way
that the upper motor neurons
communicate with the lower motor neurons
and generating a pathway, a
neural circuit, as we call it,
that is very efficient at
generating action potentials,
which are the electricity within neurons
to trigger the muscle.
Now, of course there
are events that happen
from nerve to muscle
but the takeaway from that
enormous literature, frankly
is that if you want to get faster,
yes, it can be beneficial to get stronger.
But if you want to dedicate
resistance training specifically
to jumping higher, to running
faster, to throwing further
and these sorts of things that
learning to generate force
with increasing speed is
going to be beneficial.
On the flip side of that
for people that want to get stronger,
it appears that the
slowing down of the weight
as things get harder is a key parameter
in recruiting those high
threshold motor units.
So let me phrase that a
little bit differently.
Think about a set in the gym
or think about a set of
pushups or a set of pull-ups.
Initially you can move
very fast if you like.
If you want to generate hypertrophy,
the goal really is not
necessarily to move super slow
but to isolate the muscle
and therefore not to use momentum rather
than lift weights, as they
say, challenge muscles.
If you want to get stronger,
you're going to be
distributing that effort
over more muscles and more
of your nervous system.
For generating explosiveness and speed,
it's very clear that learning
to generate forces quickly
and to move heavy or
moderately heavy loads quickly
is going to be beneficial
because of the way
that you train the motor neurons.
And of course changes in the muscle.
But this could look different
for different sports.
And obviously you want
to make safety paramount.
If you're injured, you're
not going to be able
to train at all for sport
or for any purpose that is.
And so what this would involve
is something like 60% to 75%
of a one-repetition maximum,
and then in a controlled way
moving that as quickly as one
can throughout the entire set.
And certainly not going to failure
because as you approach failure,
the inability to move the
weight with good form,
the weight inevitably slows down.
In fact, there are a lot
of new technologies now
that are focused on informing people
of how quickly the bar
or weight is moving.
I saw an advertisement
for this the other day.
There are things that
people can attach to bars
that will literally speak to you
as you're doing a set and inform you
whether or not you're moving
four times more slowly per rep
than you were at the beginning.
And trying to hone in on
the exact speed of movement.
In talking to these experts
prior to this episode
it does appear that for
sake of hypertrophy,
as long as you're not
moving the muscle so quickly
that you start to distribute the effort
to lots of other muscles,
it doesn't really matter
because as the set gets harder,
the motor units that you
recruit will increase the number
of neurons that you recruit
and the number of muscle
fibers and particularly
these high threshold muscle
fibers will increase.
And so it's really only
for purposes of hypertrophy
that you really need to be concerned about
how quickly the weight is slowing down.
However, if you're trying to
get faster, more explosive
and generate more speed and
jumping power, throwing power
things of that sort, you never
really want to use a weight
or get to a portion of the set
where you're moving the
bar very, very slowly.
And I'm sure as I say that some
of the exercise physiologists
and advanced trainers out there will come
after me with pitchforks, which is fine.
I'd love to see the literature that shows
that low gear slow movements
with very heavy weights
can indeed improve explosiveness.
And that may in fact be the case,
but the data that I was able
to access was essentially
as I described just a moment ago.
So as you're probably
starting to realize you need
to customize a resistance practice
for your particular needs and goals.
And I certainly am not
the first to suggest
that people periodize their training.
That they do things from anywhere
from one month to six months,
and to see how it goes
and to make modifications as they go.
Because the nervous system in particular
the neuromuscular system
changes very quickly
at the beginning of training.
In fact, some of the
changes that one can see
when they first embrace or
start resistance training
can be very remarkable, but
they tend to slow over time.
So we've talked about a few principles.
The fact that you need
to get sufficient volume,
you need at least five sets to maintain
and you probably need about
10 sets per muscle group
in order to improve muscle.
That moving weights of moderate
to moderately heavy weight quickly
is going to be best for explosiveness.
The isolating muscles and
really contracting muscles hard
something that you can test by just
when you're outside the training session,
seeing whether or not you
can cramp the muscle hard
will tell you your capacity
to improve hypertrophy
or to engage strength
changes in that muscle.
That your ability to
contract a muscle hard is
inversely related to the number
of sets that you should do
in order to isolate and
stimulate that muscle.
And there are some other
things that can enhance
the whole process of building
nerve to muscle connections,
making them more efficient
and generating if you like
more strength and hypertrophy.
One of them I loath to say I was told
is in between set contractions.
The other name for this is the people
in the gym does typically
seem to be guys in the gym
flexing their muscles in between sets.
And indeed the research supports the fact
that contractions have about 30 seconds
in between the actual work sets,
they're not going to
favor better performance
on the work sets, if anything
they're going to compromise them.
But those hard contractions
in between sets
for a variety of reasons related
to local muscle metabolism
as well as what we talked about before
which are stress, tension, and damage,
they seem to improve
stress, tension, and damage
and the nerve to muscle contraction
in ways that facilitate hypertrophy.
In other words, if you
see that person flexing
in between sets in the gym,
provided that they're
really isolating that muscle
and provided it's one that
they ought to be improving,
not one of these people
that always skips leg day type of people.
These people are highly asymmetric
although that's up to them,
that process of flexing
in between sets does seem
to improve the nerve to muscle connection
and enhance hypertrophy.
And I say I was low to say it
because nowadays with phones
it seems like the end of
every set includes a selfie
sort of like the 11th rep of every set.
I like to joke.
It seems like very few people
are capable of actually going
into the gym and doing a workout
without taking a picture of themselves,
which I think is fine
if that's your thing.
Although I must say that
the athletes that I know
and even the recreational
athletes that I know
who seem to get the most
out of their training
and who also seem to get the most out
of other aspects of their life,
seem to be able to control
their phone behavior
both in the gym and outside of the gym.
But that's more of an
editorial point there.
In an earlier episode,
I talked about estrogen and testosterone.
And during that discussion, I talked about
the use of resistance
exercise specifically
for increasing testosterone,
both in men and in women.
And indeed that is a powerful
effect of resistance exercise.
And indeed it's mediated by the
nerve to muscle connections.
We talked about that in
that earlier episode.
I just want to briefly
mention that protocol
since it's distinctly different
from the other protocols
I've talked about today.
The protocols I've talked
about today thus far
of explosive movements or of
hypertrophy-based training
provided the training
is 60 minutes or less
will cause increases in serum testosterone
that's been shown over and over again.
And if the session extends
too long, past 75 minutes
and is of sufficiently
high intensity chances are
testosterone levels will start to drop
and cortisol levels will go up
in ways that can be
detrimental to recovery
and the goals of the training.
But that's different than training
that's specifically geared
toward increasing testosterone.
Duncan French, who's one of the directors
of the UFC Performance Center,
when he was a graduate student
at University of Connecticut
Stores did some beautiful work.
He and his colleagues found
the ideal training protocols
for stimulating testosterone release
which is something that
many people want to do
for a variety of reasons.
And that involved doing
six sets of 10 repetitions
even if it requires lightening the weight
on one set to the next,
with about two minutes
120 seconds rest in between sets.
Which if you think of about
it is pretty short rest
and is pretty darn hard work.
Now, what's interesting is that
there's a very limited threshold
for increasing testosterone.
That protocol of six sets
of 10 repetitions led
to these big increases
in serum testosterone.
But if people did 10 sets of 10
so just four more repetitions per set,
then testosterone did not increase.
In fact, you got more of this
catabolic cortisol like pathway.
You get other benefits from this
so-called 10 sets of 10 protocol,
but not the testosterone increase
and maybe even reductions in testosterone.
Now, it's important to point out that
that six sets of 10 was done
with big compound movements.
So things like squats,
or deadlifts, or chin-ups
or things of that sort.
And those were done as single sessions
not in concert with a bunch
of other exercise, although
if athletes are doing
that, there's no reason
why they couldn't also do other types
of training elsewhere in the week.
I asked Duncan about this
and he mentioned that
that done twice a week
is probably the maximum
that anyone could do that
and still maintain this
increase in testosterone.
It's a very interesting protocol
because as a neuroscientist, it's amazing
to me that six sets of 10
repetitions with something,
causes a distinctly different result
in terms of hormone output
than 10 sets of 10 of
the exact same movement.
And it speaks to the
exquisite way in which nerve
to muscle connections
dictate the whole physiology
of your entire system.
If there's a theme that I really
want to bring forward today
is that weight training or
resistance training of any kind
is really used for
either systemic effects.
10% of training done where
you're feeling that burn
which means lactate will be present
and sending signals to your brain,
and your heart and your
liver that are beneficial
or isolating muscles
which may also generate
a kind of a lactate which is
associated with the burn result
but that isolation of
muscles distinctly different.
So systemic versus isolated.
Those are the two general ways
in which resistance
training can be applied.
So I just wanted to mention
that earlier protocol
because it's well supported
by the literature.
If you were to incorporate that protocol,
you might ask, well, then can you do any
other weight training during the week?
And sure, of course you can
provided you're recovering.
So let's talk about how you
know if you're recovering.
How you know if a muscle is recovered
and how you know if your
whole system is recovered.
Because recovery is what
dictates whether or not
you can come back and do more
work of a different kind.
Meaning, I don't know, you
do a leg training one day,
can you and should you come back
and do the upper body training day?
And it dictates whether or
not you'll see any improvement
from session to session at all.
Before I talk about recovery
I just want to make sure
I nailed down the details
that I was able to extract
from the literature
and from my conversation with Dr. Galpin.
If you're wondering how
quickly to perform repetitions
for sake of hypertrophy or strength gains,
anywhere from a half a
second per repetition
all the way up to eight
seconds per repetition,
it doesn't seem to matter.
Again, if you're thinking
about explosiveness
or building speed, or you're specifically
using resistance training
to build endurance,
that's a separate matter.
We talked about explosiveness and speed.
I'll talk about endurance
in a few moments.
We also talked about in
between set contractions
the so called selfie effect
of people flexing a particular muscle,
isolating a particular
muscle between sets,
just want to mention that
would be a terrible thing to do
if your goal is performance on sets.
So moving a particular amount of weight.
That's actually going to
diminish the amount of weight
that you can move.
It's going to enhance muscle growth
and it's going to enhance the nerve
to muscle isolation of
that particular pathway.
So again, that flexing
between sets is going
to favor hypertrophy, not performance.
If you're trying to get stronger,
you're trying to move more weights,
you're trying to distribute work,
and you're trying to
do maybe skill training
with resistance then flexing between sets
is absolutely the wrong thing
to do for obvious reasons
you're fatiguing the muscle further.
Just remaining still or
walking around a little bit
has been shown to be beneficial in terms
of moving some of the
lactate out of the muscle
as well as just recovering between sets.
Now, how long to recover
between sets, is a question.
For the testosterone protocol,
Duncan French and colleagues
found that it was about
two minutes keeping
that really on the clock,
two minutes not longer.
For hypertrophy and for strength gains,
it does seem that resting
anywhere from two minutes
or even three or four,
even five or six minutes
can be beneficial.
And if you're interested
in expanding the volume
of work that you can do in a given session
at high capacity at high
intensity, with a given weight,
please see the episode that I did
on cold and performance about
supercharging performance
which is based on the work of my colleague
Craig Heller in the Biology
Department at Stanford,
which talks about Palmer Cooling,
about how you can cool
the core of the body best
through the palms using these
particular venous portals
that are only present in your hands.
People are now doing this with
ice packs or with gel packs.
There are a number of
different ways one can do this.
I talk all about that in that episode.
It allows you to do more repetitions
and more work at a given weight over time.
So rather than getting 10 repetitions
and then eight and then seven and then six
through proper use of palmer cooling,
one can do 10, 10, 10,
10, and even add sets.
And that's one way that one can accomplish
higher volume work without having
to drop the weight considerably.
So that's where you can
hit that really sweet spot
if that's your goal of getting strong
and generating some hypertrophy.
Because as soon as you have
to drop to lighter weights,
then you're shifting
more towards hypertrophy
and endurance and less toward
strength of any given muscle.
So check out that episode.
The last thing besides
between set contractions
and whether or not
you're distributing work
or whether or not you're really
trying to isolate muscles
is this notion of pre-exhausting muscles.
It's been shown over and over again
that for instance, if you
want to generate force
in a given muscle and really isolate that,
doing the isolation work
before a compound movement.
So this would be leg extensions
the thing where you sit
and you extend your toes
up toward the ceiling.
Leg extensions before
squats will allow the squats
to target that muscle
group more effectively.
And that makes perfectly
good sense based on
the Henneman's size principle
and fatiguing motor units.
It should be obvious why that's the case.
But of course that's going
to be anti performance
in terms of how much weight you can lift,
and maybe even the form
that you can maintain
when you move to the
bigger compound movement.
So you really have to ask
yourself a number of questions.
How good are you at
isolating a given muscle?
Therefore, how many
sets do you want to do?
How often are you willing to train
therefore, how many
sets are you going to do
in a given session versus
how many are you going
to distribute across the week?
Are you aiming for performance?
Are you going to distribute that work
across the nervous system and musculature?
Are you trying to move weights?
Are you trying to challenge muscles?
If you're trying to challenge muscles,
then you really want to focus on things
like this pre exhausting the isolation
of a muscle before the compound movement.
Your performance on compound movements
will absolutely suffer but your ability
to isolate that muscle
and generate hypertrophy
through the accumulation of larger myosin,
those bigger balloons, will benefit.
And once again, if you're
trying to get faster
than the speed of the
movement really matters.
So how do we know if we've recovered?
How can we test recovery?
And this is not just recovery
from resistance training,
this is recovery from running,
recovery from swimming.
Up until now I've been talking
about resistance training
more or less in a vacuum.
I haven't even touched on the fact
that many people are running
and they're doing resistance training
or they're swimming and they're
doing resistance training.
It's not simply the case that
if a given muscle is fatigued
you can just work other muscles.
Because even if you've
beautifully isolated a muscle,
let's say you have incredible abilities
to isolate just your
quadriceps for instance
and you do a workout where
you isolate your quadriceps
you do your six sets of intense work
or maybe use palmer cooling,
and you're able to do
12 sets of intense work
and you're done, and that muscle group
the next day is certainly
not going to be recovered
unless you're somebody who's
extraordinary at recovery
or you're enhancing your
recovery through chemical means
which we'll talk about at the end.
Well, you can assess systemic recovery
meaning your nervous system.
And your nervous system's
ability to generate force
both distributed and isolated
through three main tests.
And fortunately, these
tests are very simple
and two of them are essentially zero cost,
require no equipment.
HRV, heart rate variability
has made its way finally
into the forefront of exercise physiology
and even into the popular discussion.
I've talked about HRV before.
How when we exhale, our
heart rate slows down
because of the way that our diaphragm
is connected to our heart and to our brain
and the way our brain is
connected to our heart.
When we inhale our heart rate speeds up
and that is the basis of
heart rate variability.
Heart rate variability is good.
It means that you're breathing properly,
and when I say it's good it means
you want a lot of heart rate variability.
You don't want a heart rate that is high
or low consistently over time.
That might come as a bit
of a surprise for you
endurance athletes,
who probably are trying
to accomplish your endurance
work at a steady cadence
to really hit that nice sweet spot
where you're breathing rhythmically,
your heart rate's going rhythmically.
You're in that steady heart rate,
and then away from exercise,
you have a nice low
heart rate as they say.
Well, nice low heart rate isn't
necessarily always so nice.
Turns out the introducing bouts
of increasing your heart
rate during exercise
and even through your waking day,
through stressful events
even is provided their brief
is beneficial.
A good nerve to heart system benefits
from being able to increase heart rate
and decrease heart rate.
Heart rate variability is good.
So you don't want high heart rate,
you don't want low
heart rate all the time.
But heart rate variability is difficult
for a lot of people to measure.
There are some devices that
will allow you to do that.
Various watches and devices.
There are more devices becoming
available all the time.
Hopefully soon, some that are integrated
with your phone that involve no contact
or anything on your body.
But those do carry some costs
and they are not perfect yet.
The measures of heart rate
variability that one can use
while in movement are still in that phase
I would say of technology development
where everyone isn't using
them, let's leave it at that.
There are two measures however,
whether or not you
recovered that you can use
first thing in the
morning when you wake up,
maybe after five, 10 minutes, if you like,
but ideally right when you wake up
in order to assess how
well recovered you are
and therefore whether
or not you should train
your whole system at all that day.
The first one his grip strength.
Grip strength, the
ability to generate force
at the level of squeezing the fist
or squeezing down on something,
might seem like kind of a trivial way
to assess recovery but
it's not because it relates
to your ability to use
your upper motor neurons
to control your lower motor neurons
and to generate isolated force.
So that's really what you're
assessing when you do that.
Some people will use
one of these grip tools
or Costello has this toy
that's shaped like a donut
and it's this hard rubber.
And I've tried this before.
If I've been working really
hard, not sleeping very well,
or I've been training a lot
any one or combination of
those things, my grip suffers.
I can't actually squeeze that thing down
as much as I can Costello
because he was born
with like a 24 inch neck
even though he's never touched a weight
somehow he can just
clamp down on that thing,
and he can turn it into
a pancake with ease
and he likes to chuckle while
I struggle with this thing.
But on a good day, I
can squeeze this thing
so that I eliminate the hole
in the donut so to speak.
You can also take a floor
scale and squeeze the scale
and see how much force you can generate.
I would do that as a baseline to establish
what you can do when you're well rested.
And then if you do that in the morning,
you can see whether or not you're able
to generate the same amount of force
or you could use over the
rubber donut or something.
A lot of this is very subjective
with a scale you're
really trying to assess
whether or not you can generate
the same amount of force.
If you start seeing a 10% or
20% certainly reduction in that
that's concerning, it
means that your system,
your nervous system as a whole
it's not necessarily
fatigued, is that the pathways
from nerve to muscle
are still in the process
of rewiring themselves in
order to generate force.
And you might think, well, I
train one muscle group one day.
Why am I having a hard time doing this
for a completely different muscle group?
It doesn't make any sense.
But there's something about
the upper motor neuron
to lower motor neuron pathway generally
that allows you to use
something like grip strength
as a kind of a thermometer, if you will
of your ability to recover.
So look for your ability
to generate force in grip
when you first wake up.
It's not going to be as
good as it is at 3:00 PM
after a cup of coffee and a couple meals
but the point isn't performance overall,
the point is to assess whether or not
you're getting better, worse
or the same from day to day.
The other one that's really terrific
and the Andy Galpin's group is using.
And I'm delighted about
this because it relates
to something that my lab is
very excited about as well
is carbon dioxide tolerance.
So this is a really interesting tool
that endurance athletes, strength athletes
I think can all benefit from.
In fact athletes and people of all kinds.
Even if you're not an athlete,
even if you're not exercising at all,
there's a good question of
whether or not your system
as a whole is doing okay or not.
We rely on the thermometer.
Do we have a fever or not?
We rely on subjective things.
Do I feel good or not?
Am I digesting well or not?
Those are all subjective.
The carbon dioxide tolerance test is,
its objective in that it
measures your capacity
to engage the so-called
parasympathetic arm
of your nervous system
which is the calming aspect
of your nervous system.
And it measures your ability
to consciously control
a particular skeletal muscle,
which is your diaphragm.
So here's how you do the
carbon dioxide tolerance test.
You wake up in the morning.
If you have to use the
restroom first, do that,
but try and stay away from your phone.
If you have your phone,
put it on airplane mode,
go to the timer or use a
hand watch or some other way
of measuring time, stay off social media
for just a few seconds.
It'll be okay.
And what you're going to do
is you're going to inhale
through your nose as deeply as you can,
you can do this lying
down, sitting, whatever
inhale through your nose
and then exhale all the way.
So that's one.
You're going to repeat that four times.
So inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale
inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale four times.
And ideally you're
inhaling through the nose
and you're exhaling through the mouth.
That's just the beginning
of this carbon dioxide tolerance test.
Then you take a fifth inhale
as deep as you can through your nose.
Fill your lungs as much as you can,
and if you can try and expand
make your stomach go
out while you do that,
that means that your
diaphragm has really engaged.
So you're inhaling as
much as you possibly can.
Then hit the timer and
your goal is to release
that air as slowly as
possible through your mouth.
So it looks like you have
a tiny, tiny little straw
in your mouth and you're letting it go.
As slowly as you possibly can.
Measure what we call the
carbon dioxide blow off time
or discard rate.
I know you can all sit with lungs empty
after you eliminate all that
air, but don't lie to yourself.
Don't stop the timer
when you've been sitting
with your lungs empty for a while,
stop the timer when you
are finally no longer
able to exhale any more air.
So you do inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale,
inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale slowly.
I just said it quickly for sake of time
then you can do this fifth
big inhale through your mouth,
and then [deep exhale]
And I'm not going to do
it for the full duration.
And then you're measuring that time.
Your carbon dioxide discard
rate will be somewhere
between one second and
presumably two minutes.
Two minutes would be a heroic
carbon oxide discard time.
30 seconds would be more typical.
20 seconds would be fast.
If your carbon dioxide discard time
is 20 or 25 seconds or less,
you are not necessarily recovered
from your previous days activities.
There's ways to push through this
but hold onto that thought for a moment.
If your carbon oxide
discard time is somewhere
between about 30 seconds and 60 seconds,
you are in what we would
call kind of the green zone
where you are in a position
to do more physical work.
And if your carbon dioxide
discard time is somewhere
between 65 and 120 seconds,
well then you have almost certainly
recovered your nervous system.
I'm not talking about
the individual muscles
but your nervous system is
prepared to do more work.
And Andy's Lab has great data on this
as it relates to exercise physiology.
I think that story should be out
in the not too distant future.
My lab has been using
carbon oxide discard time
to look at anxiety and
recovery from bouts of anxiety.
So two totally independent projects
but using the same measure.
So you've got HRV, which
requires some technology usually.
You've got grip strength,
which you can assess subjectively
or you can use a floor scale
and now you have carbon dioxide tolerance.
You want to do this in the
morning when you wake up
and keep track just write
down in a little book,
or maybe just keep tracking your mind
of your carbon oxide discard time.
If you find that your
discard times are dropping
even if they're in the
42nd range or 52nd range,
but normally you can do
75 seconds or 120 seconds.
If they're starting to drop
by anywhere from 15% to 20%,
you're veering in the
direction of not recovering.
And I'm really keen on this tool
because everybody has
different recovery abilities.
Some people are eating really
well and sleeping really well.
Some people have minimal stress
or can buffer stress really well.
Other people they dissolve
into a puddle of tears
if they read one text message
that's troubling or whatever.
And I realize, and I
say that with sympathy,
I realize people have
varying levels of stress
and demand in their life.
It's just to to prescribe
an entire protocol
that says, okay, yes
you should train today
and this is exactly what you should do.
No, you shouldn't.
Use carbon dioxide discard rate because a,
it's valuable, it's informative.
b, it's zero cost and c,
it's something you can
track objectively over time.
And that's really the key.
And I'd be remiss if I didn't say
that what carbon dioxide
discard rate is tapping into
is your ability to mechanically
control your diaphragm
certainly that's one aspect of it,
but that relates in a very
direct way to your ability
to put the brake on your stress system.
To engage the so-called parasympathetic
or calming arm of your
autonomic nervous system.
And another thing that Andy
Galpin's group is testing
is at the offset of
training after your run,
after your weight training session,
maybe even after your plyometrics session,
we didn't really talk
about jumping and throwing
and that sort of thing.
Maybe we'll talk about
it in a future episode.
But they and other groups,
including some elite athletes
and other groups that are very interested
in physical performance are using a tool
where they deliberately disengaged
for five minutes at the end of training.
They deliberately engage this
calming or parasympathetic arm
of the nervous system.
And you can do that through
any number of different tools.
I'm a big fan of respiration tools
'cause they're always available to you.
Your breathing is always there.
I talk about some of these
tools in previous episodes
but you could use things like
non sleep deep rest and SDR
at the end of a training session.
You could do 10 physiological size,
double inhales through the
nose followed by long exhales,
that will definitely engage the
parasympathetic nervous
system at the end of training.
So rather than finish
your training session
and then just hop onto your phone,
serious athletes and people
who are serious about recovery
initiate that recovery at the
very end of their training
and they start to kickstart
that recovery process rather
and they measure CO2
tolerance in the morning.
So there are several
groups that are doing that.
In fact, I know several
groups because I'm working
with them that are using
physiological size between sets
in order to recover their nervous system
and maintain nerve to
muscle contractibility.
Maintain focus throughout
their training session
enhance their focus by doing
a few physiological size.
So double inhale, exhale in between sets.
So they're getting very
focused and very intense
about their strength work
or explosiveness worker,
muscle isolation work during their sets.
And then in between sets,
they're deliberately
disengaging the nervous system,
and then they're re-engaging it again.
So I just wanted to emphasize that.
So recovery is a complex process.
It's got a lot of things
but the CO2 tolerance set
should be a valuable tool.
Now, another tool for recovery
that people are very excited about
is the use of cold and the ice bath.
And this is important.
If you are somebody who uses
cold through cold shower,
or ice bath, or jumping
in a lake, or a river
whatever it is that used to generate cold
as a recovery tool, you should be aware
that there are data
starting to emerge that
if your goal is recovery
or strength improvements,
using cold within the four
hours following a workout.
I'm not talking about
palmer cooling, I'm talking
about whole body cooling or
cooling from the neck down.
Yes, it will reduce inflammation.
Yes, it will reduce the amount
of delayed on muscle soreness one readout
of how intense or damaging
a given workout was
not the only readout,
but it does seem to interfere with some
of the things like mTOR pathways,
the mammalian target of rapamycin pathway
and other pathways
related to an inflammation
that promote muscle
repair and muscle growth.
Remember, stress, tension, and damage
or the stimulus for nerve to
muscle connections to change
and for muscles to get
bigger, stronger, and better.
And so if you're getting into
the ice bath after training
or taking a really cold shower
after doing resistance training,
you are likely short-circuiting
the improvements
that you're trying to create.
Now, athletes who are
trying to recover quickly
so that they can get back
into more training sessions,
or let's say you're
somebody who doesn't really
want to gain much strength or hypertrophy
and you're mainly focused on endurance
and you want to do more endurance work
and you've been weight training,
well then exposing yourself
to cold can be beneficial,
but you're not going to
get as great of benefits
from the resistance training.
In other words, cold
after resistance training
seems to short circuit
some of the benefits
of that resistance training.
There are some other things
that can short circuit the benefits
of resistance training as well.
One of those is anti-histamines.
Some interesting data
were published recently.
I believe it was in
scientific reports, yes
that showed that
anti-histamines can prevent some
of the benefits of cardiovascular exercise
of endurance type work
as running, swimming
of fairly long duration
or even sprint type work,
as well as inhibit some of
the processes associated
with resistance training.
Remember, it resistance
training or endurance training,
that's a stimulus for stress
and the adaptation to that
stress is how you get better.
That you can run further, faster,
lift more weight, hypertrophy
the muscle, et cetera.
So anti-histamines can be a problem.
Obviously don't compromise your ability
to breathe completely, but
anti-histamines generally work
by blocking what are called
mast cells and M-A-S-T.
Mast cells are really interesting cells
that we'll talk about in our
month on neuro immune function.
They travel in the bloodstream
and these little packets that burst open
it sites of inflammation.
Muscle damage and inflammation is a signal
that something needs to change.
And so taking it to histamines
it appears can disrupt
some of that inflammatory process.
So you actually want inflammation
during and immediately after a workout,
then you want to bring
inflammation down later
and I'll mention how to do that.
The other thing are non-steroid
anti-inflammatory drugs
you know their trade names.
These are painkillers
that many people take.
Those as I've mentioned
in a previous episode
can interfere with the
benefits of endurance training
and the benefits of resistance training.
In addition to that,
they block pain signals
and pain is a very good signal
that you might be doing something wrong.
And so while nobody likes to be in pain,
I suppose there are probably
a few people out there
like to be in pain, but
that's a different story
but nobody likes to be in pain.
The non-steroid
anti-inflammatory the NSAIDs
as they're called, and
the anti-histamines seem
to prevent a lot of the gains
the improvements in
endurance, strength and size
that people are specifically
using exercise for.
So be cautious about your use
of non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs
especially within the four hours preceding
or the four hours following exercise.
So I hope you're starting
to get the picture.
In order to change the
nerve to muscle connectivity
in ways that will better serve you,
you need a stressor
during the actual training
which particular stressor
depends on your training goals.
But that stressor is almost always going
to be associated with inflammation,
and then after the
training, you want to try
and get into a state of
reduced inflammation.
And that's why you would
do some sort of protocol
non sleep depressed which we
will link to in our caption
or perhaps you would use the hypnosis app
that we've talked about before
Reveri, R-E-V-E-R-I.com.
There's a great app for
accessing deep rest states
or the physiological side
to try and get your system
to calm down after training.
There are also tools that one
can use to reduce inflammation
at a kind of foundational
level away from training.
And these are tools that I've talked
about many times before, but
I'll just restate them again.
The kind of Golden Three
according to Andy Galpin
and the ones that he recommends are
sufficient omega-3s again,
that can be accomplished
through diet, through whole food intake
or through supplementation or both.
So in general, getting
above a 1,000 milligrams
of EPA per day to keep
inflammation low or relatively low.
Vitamin D and in some
cases, magnesium malate.
[100:01] Magnesium malate seems to
be particularly effective
[100:04] in offsetting delayed
onset muscle soreness.
[100:07] Soreness itself is not required
[100:10] for improvements in strength,
improvements in explosiveness,
[100:13] improvements in hypertrophy.
[100:15] That's a myth.
[100:16] Now, if you do experience
delayed onset muscle soreness,
[100:19] chances are you stressed that
particular muscle pretty well
[100:23] or even maybe to well, maybe
you stressed it too much
[100:26] and you need longer recovery.
[100:28] There's a total debate
out there about whether
[100:30] or not you should train again
when a muscle is still sore.
[100:33] I think the general takeaway is, no
[100:34] that means it's not recovered.
[100:36] And there are things
of course like massage,
[100:38] like fascial release
and things of that sort
[100:41] sauna, cold that can perhaps
accelerate the movement
[100:47] from soreness to not sore.
[100:49] But in general, the omega-3, vitamin D,
[100:51] and magnesium malate trio
seemed to be an effective way
[100:55] to reduce inflammation at
kind of a systemic level.
[100:58] But remember you want
inflammation provided
[101:00] you're not damaging the muscles so much
[101:01] that you're injured during
the training session
[101:04] because that's the stimulus
for change in those muscles.
[101:08] I want to talk about a few other things
[101:10] that support the process of
nerve to muscle communication
[101:13] and touch on some of the things that a lot
[101:15] of people are doing to try
to "enhance their workouts"
[101:19] and evaluate whether or not those are
[101:20] in fact enhancing workouts or not.
[101:23] Because weight training,
unlike a lot of other forms
[101:26] of exercise has a unique aspect to it,
[101:30] which is this feature
that I guess some people
[101:33] call it the pump which is
the fact that blood goes
[101:35] into the muscle when you
train, it's the only gun
[101:38] of training where you
actually get a window
[101:40] into what the result
might actually look like
[101:42] before you actually
accomplish that result.
[101:44] So if you think about when
you go out for a hard run
[101:46] and let's say you go
out for a two mile run,
[101:49] let's say your goal is to break
[101:50] you want to do a sub ten two mile.
[101:52] Actually, when I went to university
[101:54] I was running cross country,
my senior year of high school
[101:57] and I wanted to walk on
for the cross country team.
[102:01] And so I went out there and turned out
[102:03] you had to do a sub 10, two mile.
[102:06] And I think the best mile
I ever ran in high school
[102:09] was a 457, which isn't terrible.
[102:11] I can't do that now.
[102:12] It's not even close to what
[102:14] the best high school athletes can do now.
[102:17] But that would have meant
doing it back-to-back.
[102:19] So it was sub 10 minute two
mile didn't even come close.
[102:22] I told Costello this story the other day
[102:24] and he just kind of laughed at me.
[102:26] He was like, why would you
even want to run two miles?
[102:28] Because Costello is
built almost exclusively
[102:31] of these type two fast twitch muscles
[102:33] they're designed for moving objects.
[102:35] He's incredibly strong.
[102:36] He has been since he was a puppy.
[102:38] I mean that dog could
probably drag a tractor
[102:41] if he wanted to, but
he can't really go far.
[102:45] Whereas a Greyhound or a Whippet
[102:46] or some of these other
sight hounds or scent hounds
[102:48] can go, go, go.
[102:49] They have a higher percentage of the
[102:50] so-called slow-twitch muscle fibers.
[102:52] They are much better at endurance.
[102:55] So a sub-10 two mile would have
been very, very challenging,
[102:58] no chance I could have done that.
[103:01] I don't think even with a lot of training.
[103:03] But let's say that you want
to improve your performance
[103:08] in a given type of exercise.
[103:09] Let's talk about some of
the things that seem to work
[103:12] across the board to improve
strength, improve hypertrophy,
[103:17] and improve nerve to muscle
communication and performance.
[103:20] The first thing that's absolutely key
[103:22] for nerve to muscle communication
and physical performance
[103:25] of any kind might not
sound that exciting to you
[103:28] but it is very exciting.
[103:30] And that's salt.
[103:33] Nerves cells, neurons
communicate with each other
[103:36] and communicate with
muscle by electricity.
[103:39] But that electricity is generated
by particular ions moving
[103:43] into and out of the neuron.
[103:45] And the rushing in of a
particular ion, sodium, salt
[103:50] is what allows nerve cells to fire.
[103:52] If you don't have enough
salt in your system
[103:55] your neurons and your brain and your nerve
[103:57] to muscle communication will be terrible.
[104:00] If you have sufficient
salt, it will be excellent.
[104:03] How much salt will depend on
how much water you're drinking,
[104:06] how much caffeine you're drinking,
[104:07] and how much food you're ingesting.
[104:09] And whether or not you're
taking any diuretics
[104:11] how hot it is, et cetera,
how much you're sweating.
[104:14] So you want to make sure
that you have enough salt,
[104:16] potassium and magnesium in your system
[104:18] if you want to perform well.
[104:19] I realized that salt isn't
very glamorous performance tool
[104:23] but it is a vital.
[104:24] Its absolutely vital.
[104:26] And the endurance athletes
and the people that train
[104:28] in high heat can speak to the fact that
[104:30] when your electrolytes are low,
your brain doesn't function,
[104:34] your body doesn't function nearly as well.
[104:36] In fact, even for mental
work, for studying
[104:39] and for writing and for
doing math and coding,
[104:42] doing analytic work of any kind,
[104:43] even a hard conversation
that's important to you,
[104:46] having sufficient electrolytes
is really going to help
[104:48] and being low on electrolytes won't help
[104:51] and just drinking water won't help
[104:52] because you need electrolytes.
[104:54] The other thing that's been
shown over and over again,
[104:57] a numerous well-controlled studies
[104:59] to improve muscle performance is creatine.
[105:03] Early on there was a lot of
controversy about creatine
[105:06] but there are many studies
if you want, you can go
[105:08] to this website that
everyone now knows I love
[105:10] which is this free website examined.com
[105:13] that there are no fewer
than 18 studies there.
[105:17] 66 studies...
[105:19] So 18 studies supporting
that muscle creating content
[105:22] can be increased by ingesting creatine.
[105:24] How much creatine?
[105:25] Well, I asked the experts and they tell me
[105:28] that for somebody who is about 180 pounds,
[105:31] five grams a day should
be sufficient or so.
[105:35] Heavier than 180, so if you got like
[105:36] if you're a 220 pound or 230 pound person,
[105:39] 10 to 15 grams of creatine.
[105:41] People lighter than 180 pounds
[105:43] maybe three to five grams of creatine
[105:45] or even one to three grams.
[105:47] Creatine is a fuel source for
early in bouts of activity
[105:53] for high intensity activity.
[105:54] It is also a fuel source
for neurons in the brain
[105:57] and it can have some
cognitive enhancing effects.
[106:01] So creatine is a very
interesting molecule.
[106:03] Early on when it was
released as a supplement,
[106:07] it was thought that you had to load it
[106:09] in higher dosages for a few days
[106:11] and then maintain it at lower dosages.
[106:14] So you'd take 20 or 30 grams a day
[106:16] then back off to five or 10.
[106:17] It doesn't seem to be the case
[106:19] that you can get all the benefits
[106:20] from taking the dosages at the low level.
[106:22] I just mentioned a few moments ago
[106:24] as they relate to body weight throughout.
[106:27] So salt and electrolytes absolutely key.
[106:30] You need those present.
[106:31] You need to be well hydrated.
[106:33] Creatine seems to have a
performance enhancing effect.
[106:36] There are 66 studies, 66
showing that power output
[106:41] is greatly increased
anywhere from 1%2 to 20%.
[106:46] And this is sprinting and running
[106:47] and jumping as well as
weightlifting by creatine.
[106:50] The ability to hydrate
your body is improved
[106:54] by creating because of the
way that it brings more water
[106:58] into cells of various kinds.
[107:00] As an indirect effect, it
can help in increasingly mass
[107:03] because of the way that it
brings more water into muscle
[107:05] and probably also because of the way that
[107:07] if you get stronger, you
can generate more force
[107:09] and generate more hypertrophy.
[107:11] It reduces fatigue.
[107:13] Seven studies have shown
that it reduces fatigue.
[107:16] There are even some interesting effects
[107:18] on improving cognition after
traumatic brain injury.
[107:20] Although that's a serious
medical condition in situations
[107:23] you absolutely should talk to
a board certified physician
[107:25] before adding anything
or taking anything out
[107:28] of your current regimen.
[107:31] There are a few other
effects that are interesting
[107:32] and notable, but the big ones
are the ones that I referred
[107:36] to before about increased
power output, et cetera.
[107:39] And I just want to emphasize
[107:40] that creatine can increase this hormone
[107:43] that we talked about in
the testosterone episode,
[107:45] dihydrotestosterone which
is testosterone converted
[107:49] by five alpha reductase
into dihydrotestosterone.
[107:52] It's the more dominant androgen in humans.
[107:56] Leads to increases in strength
and libido and so forth.
[107:59] It also can increase
male pattern baldness.
[108:01] Some people, not everybody
experience some hair loss
[108:04] with creatine other people don't.
[108:06] Some people experience
accelerated beard growth
[108:08] because basically [mumbles]
[108:10] has the opposite effect on
hair follicles on the face
[108:12] as it does on the scalp,
some people don't.
[108:15] Women who ingest creatine
[108:18] there are essentially no data showing
[108:20] that it increases hair
loss or facial hair growth,
[108:23] but of course, everyone is different.
[108:25] So you can go to examine.com.
[108:26] You can explore those studies.
[108:28] So creatine definitely a powerful
[108:30] performance enhancing molecule.
[108:32] The other one, one that
personally I've never tried
[108:35] but that seems to have a very strong
[108:37] and well-supported
effects is beta-alanine.
[108:41] Now, beta-alanine is interesting
[108:43] because when you hear
about weight training
[108:45] you think about heavy
deadlifts and bench presses
[108:47] all that kind of stuff
that people are doing.
[108:49] But beta-alanine seems to support exercise
[108:53] that is of slightly longer duration.
[108:55] So a mix of anaerobic and
aerobic type movement.
[109:00] These are physical performance
in the 60 to 242nd range.
[109:04] So you can use your mind
and kind of figure out.
[109:07] Things that weights that limit you
[109:09] to 8 to 15 repetitions.
[109:11] Cardiovascular exercise of the sort
[109:13] like rowing or sprinting.
[109:16] So interval work, it seems to
help with that kind of work.
[109:18] So we're not talking about long runs,
[109:20] we're not talking about heavy deadlifts.
[109:21] The standard dose is somewhere
between two and five grams,
[109:24] again, as always check with a doctor,
[109:26] make sure these things are safe for you.
[109:28] I'm not responsible for your health.
[109:29] You are.
[109:30] I don't say that just to protect me.
[109:31] I'd say that also to protect you
[109:34] but it really seems to
improve muscular endurance,
[109:38] improve anaerobic running
capacity, reduce fatigue.
[109:41] There are even some interesting effects
[109:43] on reduction of body fat and
improvements in lean mass.
[109:46] So creatine, beta-alanine, electrolytes,
[109:49] these are kind of the core three things
[109:51] that seem to improve performance
[109:53] and are well supported by
the scientific literature.
[109:56] And in the earlier episode
on supercharging performance
[109:59] we talked about palmer cooling.
[110:01] That's certainly a
performance enhancing tool.
[110:03] It's nothing you ingest
your cooling your palms
[110:05] in a very specific way.
[110:07] That's very powerful.
[110:07] Now, what about for longer
duration bouts of exercise?
[110:10] We've mainly been focusing
on resistance training,
[110:12] but what about for long runs, long swims,
[110:14] these kinds of things?
[110:16] Well, it does seem that
juice and ingesting things
[110:19] like arginine and citrulline
can improve performance
[110:22] for those long bouts of exercise
[110:25] that's mainly going to be due to effects
[110:27] of those compounds on vasodilation.
[110:29] It's going to open up the vasculature
[110:31] and allow more blood flow.
[110:33] Do note that things like
citrulline and arginine
[110:36] can have some side effects if you will.
[110:39] They can increase the likelihood
[110:42] of having herpes cold sore
outbreaks on the mouth.
[110:45] The arginine is in the
pathway by which I don't know
[110:48] if people know this, but
the herpes virus lives
[110:50] on neurons of the trigeminal
nerve that innervates the lips
[110:54] and the eyes and the mucus
membranes of the face.
[110:57] So this is the herpes
type 1 simplex virus.
[111:00] The virus lives on those neurons
[111:03] and then periodically
inflames those neurons,
[111:05] and that's what leads to the
cold sores seems like arginine
[111:08] and citrulline can lead
to increases in cold sores
[111:12] and canker sores, and
outbreaks of those kinds.
[111:15] So you want to be aware of that.
[111:18] That's not everybody, and not
everybody is caring HSV-1,
[111:23] just be aware that I think
it's now 80% or 90% of people
[111:28] by time they're 12 years old,
they've contracted HSV-1.
[111:31] It's very contagious and
typically one outbreak,
[111:35] and then only under conditions of stress
[111:37] or heightened arginine
or citrulline ingestion
[111:39] we'll have them later.
[111:41] Again, this is not necessarily an STI,
[111:48] a sexually transmitted infection.
[111:49] This is an infection that
is passed very easily
[111:52] from mucous membranes, just
in terms of touching objects
[111:55] and things of that sort.
[111:56] Very common in the general population.
[111:59] Any discussion about muscle
and muscle performance
[112:03] would not be adequate if
we didn't mention something
[112:05] about nutrition,
[112:06] but rather than have a whole
discussion about nutrition,
[112:08] 'cause there's lots of
information about that online,
[112:11] for instance, if you want to gain muscle
[112:12] that you need to have a calorie
surplus of about 10 to 15%.
[112:17] You could have a calorie surplus of more.
[112:19] If you want to avoid gaining weight
[112:22] then you would not create a
calorie surplus, et cetera.
[112:24] You can find all that information online.
[112:26] That's not what this
podcast is really about.
[112:28] We had a month where we talked a lot
[112:31] about hormones and food and moods.
[112:33] We talked about foods, but more
[112:35] as they relate to the nervous system.
[112:36] When it comes to supporting muscle.
[112:40] So supporting the synthesis of larger
[112:43] what I called myosin
balloons, it does seem
[112:46] that ingesting 700 to 3000 milligrams
[112:50] of the essential amino acid leucine
[112:52] with each meal is important.
[112:53] Now, that does not necessarily
mean from supplements.
[112:56] In fact, most people recommend
that you get your protein,
[113:01] you get your amino acids,
[113:03] including your essential amino acids
[113:04] and your leucine from whole foods.
[113:06] High quality proteins aren't
high density proteins.
[113:10] What do you mean by that?
[113:11] Well, it is true that a lot of
sources of protein are found
[113:15] in things like beans and
nuts and things like that
[113:17] that all the essential amino
acids can be found there
[113:20] but per unit calorie, if
it's in your practice,
[113:25] if it's in your ethics to
ingest animal proteins,
[113:28] it's true that for instance, 200 calories
[113:31] of steak or chicken or fish or eggs
[113:34] will have a higher density
of essential amino acids
[113:37] than the equivalent amount of
calories from nuts or plants.
[113:40] That's just simply the way it works.
[113:42] So for the vegans and vegetarians
[113:44] I'm certainly, I'm not
saying there's no way
[113:46] that you can support muscle growth.
[113:48] You absolutely can.
[113:49] Some of them might want
to supplement leucine
[113:51] but this 700 to 3000
milligrams of leucine per meal
[113:55] is one of the best ways that's been shown
[113:57] to support the synthesis of more myosin
[114:01] if your goal is hypertrophy
[114:02] and it's also the way that you
would support muscle repair
[114:05] if your goal is strength.
[114:07] So that's specifically geared
[114:08] towards muscle hypertrophy and strength.
[114:11] And I encourage you to think
[114:12] about this protein density issue.
[114:15] And whether or not you ingest
animal proteins or you don't,
[114:20] to think about whether or
not you're getting sufficient
[114:23] essential amino acids, especially leucine.
[114:27] Now, many people have
addressed the question
[114:30] of whether or not you need to
eat six or seven times a day.
[114:33] It turns out that you don't
[114:34] that's kind of the old school thinking
[114:35] that you need to eat very frequently.
[114:37] I think for certain
athletes were very active
[114:40] for drug assisted meaning people
[114:42] that are enhancing their
testosterone levels
[114:44] to super physiological levels,
[114:45] where they are experiencing
very heightened levels
[114:48] of protein synthesis and
they can utilize all that.
[114:50] That might make sense.
[114:51] Again, I'm not supporting the use
[114:52] of those performance enhancing drugs
[114:54] but there are people doing that.
[114:55] And that's one of the reasons
why they eat so frequently.
[114:59] And so much protein for typical people
[115:01] who are not doing that, I
imagine most of you are not.
[115:04] Then it does appear that you need to eat
[115:07] but you don't need to eat
six or seven times a day.
[115:10] It does seem like not eating
once a day is also important.
[115:13] So somewhere between one meal
a day and six meals a day,
[115:16] lies the more reasonable two or three
[115:18] or maybe four times a day.
[115:20] I think that a whole discussion
about this is warranted
[115:23] and we'll have this
discussion with Dr. Galpin
[115:26] at a future time of whether or not
[115:28] eating protein more frequently
[115:30] can enhance this myosin synthesis.
[115:33] But I think the simple takeaway
[115:34] from the literature that
I was able to extract
[115:36] and from my discussion with him is,
[115:38] eating two to four times a day,
[115:40] making sure you're getting
sufficient amino acids
[115:42] in a way that's compatible
with your ethics
[115:45] and with your nutritional regimen
[115:46] is going to support muscle
repair, muscle growth
[115:50] strength improvements,
et cetera, just fine.
[115:53] There's one more thing
that I'd like to cover
[115:55] which is the relationship
[115:56] between particular kinds of exercise
[115:58] and our ability to think and
perform cognitive functions.
[116:03] We all hear that exercise
is so vital for our brain
[116:06] that it supports our brain
health and our body health.
[116:08] And indeed that's true
provided it's done correctly.
[116:12] However, many of us are
familiar with the experience
[116:16] of going for a run or going for a swim
[116:18] or working out hard in
the gym, and then not
[116:20] being able to use our brain
to be essentially useless
[116:23] for cognitive functions
for the rest of the day.
[116:26] I discussed this with
Dr. Galpin this morning,
[116:29] and I learned something very interesting,
[116:30] which is that hard bouts of exercise
[116:33] of the sort where you're
training near failure
[116:35] or you're generating focused
muscular contractions,
[116:39] for obsession that lasts anywhere
[116:42] from, I don't know, 30, 45
minutes, maybe 60 minutes
[116:45] or a long run where you're engaging
[116:46] in some interval training during that run,
[116:49] after exercise, there's a
reduction in oxygenation
[116:53] of the brain.
[116:54] So there's actually a quite
significant dip in the amount
[116:56] of oxygen that your neurons are getting
[116:58] and therefore your ability to think.
[117:00] So it's important that
you control the intensity
[117:02] and the duration of your
training sessions so
[117:04] that you're still able to do well in life
[117:07] and lean to life the way you need to,
[117:09] because I'm guessing most of you are not
[117:12] in a position to just prioritize
your physical training
[117:14] you also need to use your minds.
[117:16] I'm certainly familiar with
wanting to get exercise
[117:19] but also the requirement of needing
[117:20] to perform cognitive
work throughout the day.
[117:24] It also turns out that you can leverage
[117:26] something interesting
about exercise and nerve
[117:29] to muscle work in ways that can benefit
[117:31] cognitive function and focus.
[117:33] And it has to do with
the way that your body
[117:36] and your nervous system predict bouts
[117:38] of intense focused effort.
[117:40] So let's say you're doing
resistance training two
[117:42] or three times a week,
maybe even four times a week
[117:44] and you're doing it
consistently at a given time.
[117:48] There are clocks,
literally biological clocks
[117:51] within the liver and within the brain
[117:54] that learn to predict that
focus and that intense work.
[117:59] If you are trying to get
intense cognitive work done,
[118:03] you might try scheduling
that cognitive work
[118:06] on the days when you
don't do physical training
[118:09] at the same time when
you normally would do
[118:11] that intense, focused physical training.
[118:14] Because the systems of the body
[118:16] that generate acetylcholine release
[118:18] and other neuromodulators, the systems,
[118:20] of the body and brain that
generate focused effort,
[118:23] those are on this sort of clock mechanism
[118:26] in a way that you likely will find
[118:28] that after just a week of
training at regular times
[118:31] you will be able to focus
readily on other things
[118:34] when you're not training
provided you do it
[118:36] during the period of time of day
[118:38] when you normally would train.
[118:40] So is kind of an indirect positive effect.
[118:43] You're harnessing the focus
and the expectation of focus
[118:46] in your nervous system for
that particular time of day.
[118:48] And of course, we'd be remiss
[118:50] if we didn't talk about
time of day for training.
[118:53] It turns out that whether or
not you train in the morning
[118:56] or in the afternoon, it
doesn't really seem to matter
[118:59] for sake of things like hypertrophy
and strength, et cetera.
[119:02] Everyone seems to have a time of day
[119:04] that they prefer to train.
[119:06] I've said before and their reasons
[119:07] based on body temperature rhythms
[119:10] and cortisol release
that training 30 minutes,
[119:14] three hours or 11 hours
after your normal waking time
[119:17] can be very beneficial and can provide
[119:20] a sort of predictability or regularity
[119:21] to when your body will be ready to train
[119:25] and best apt to train well.
[119:27] There is some evidence that training
[119:29] in the afternoon is
better for performance,
[119:31] whereas training for
body composition changes
[119:33] and strain changes, et cetera
[119:35] doesn't really matter when you train.
[119:37] So you also want to make
it compatible with sleep,
[119:38] compatible with work that really gets
[119:40] down into the wits of optimization.
[119:42] But I think it's interesting to note
[119:44] that if you're going to
train at a regular time,
[119:47] you can take the days when you don't train
[119:50] and use that to enhance
your cognitive focus
[119:52] for things that have
nothing to do with exercise.
[119:55] So this might be writing, or reading,
[119:56] or music, or math, et cetera.
[119:58] Typically, I restrict
these podcast episodes
[120:00] to about 90 minutes.
[120:02] So called ultradian cycle for learning.
[120:04] Today was a bit longer.
[120:05] And I admit that I tried
to pack a lot into this.
[120:09] It is the last episode in this month
[120:11] on physical performance.
[120:12] I figured in this case more is better
[120:15] especially since everything
is time-stamped for you.
[120:18] You certainly don't have
to watch it all at once
[120:20] and you can come back to
it over and over again
[120:22] into the precise locations
in the episode that you like
[120:25] in order to take notes or
extract the information
[120:27] that you need.
[120:29] I'd like to point you
to Dr. Andy Galpin page.
[120:32] I highly recommend looking into the work
[120:35] that he's doing if you want more details.
[120:37] He's very, very skilled,
excellent communicator.
[120:40] He superb at what he does.
[120:41] He's a professor.
[120:42] He works with athletes.
[120:43] He works with typical
folks in the exercise
[120:45] and muscle physiology world.
[120:47] Brad Schoenfelds work.
[120:48] I also have a lot of respect for.
[120:49] I've never met him.
[120:50] I don't know him.
[120:51] There's no paid endorsement here.
[120:52] They're not sponsors are related
to the podcast in any way.
[120:55] I just think the work
is of very high quality
[120:57] and they're both on the academic side
[120:59] and the practical side.
[121:00] And of course there are
other people out there
[121:02] doing fabulous work in this area as well.
[121:06] If you like this podcast
and you're benefiting
[121:08] from the information that you're learning
[121:09] and you want to support us, the simplest
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[121:18] Click the Subscribe button
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[121:24] It helps us get the
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[121:30] We release episodes every
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[121:34] and from time to time,
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[121:37] So you'll be sure to hear those episodes.
[121:40] In addition, check out the
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[121:57] The way this podcast is set
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[122:01] into four or five episodes, all centered
[122:04] around a given theme or topic
like hormones, like sleep.
[122:07] So the episodes on sleep, for instance
[122:09] that were way back in January,
[122:11] and what seems like way back
[122:13] are still every bit as relevant today
[122:15] as they were back in January for somebody
[122:18] that has challenges with sleep
[122:19] and wants to understand
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[122:42] the podcast episodes and
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[122:45] In the comment section.
[122:46] I really do read through
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[122:49] It takes me some time, but
I do read through those.
[122:51] I reply to as many of them
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[122:54] And they're great way
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[122:56] On Apple you can give
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[123:00] And if you want to do all
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[123:02] if you want to do just one
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[123:05] And if you do none of
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[123:07] that you come here to
digest the information
[123:09] about science and science-related tools.
[123:11] In today's episode, I
mentioned various supplements,
[123:15] various compounds that
if you deem it right
[123:17] and safe for you can
benefit athletic performance
[123:21] and muscle physiology, et cetera.
[123:24] We've partnered with Thorne T-H-O-R-N-E
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[123:32] What you see on the bottle
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[123:35] and the quality of
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[123:38] So much so that they
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[123:40] and all the major sports teams.
[123:42] If you go to Thorne
T-H-O-R-N-E.com/u/huberman,
[123:48] you can see all the
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[123:50] and you can get 20% off
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[124:02] any of those supplements listed there
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[124:07] will be 20% off at checkout.
[124:09] Last but not least, I want to thank you
[124:11] for your time and attention today.
[124:12] And as always, thank you for
your interest in science.
[124:14] [bright upbeat music]