Dr. Andy Galpin: Maximize Recovery to Achieve Fitness & Performance Goals | Huberman Lab

[Music]

welcome to the huberman lab guest Series

where I and an expert guest 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 today's

episode is the fifth in a six episode

series on fitness exercise and

performance and today's episode is all

about recovery that is how to maximize

your recovery to achieve your fitness

and exercise and performance goals and

how to avoid over training Dr Andy

Galpin

great to be back

today we're discussing recovery and I'm

very excited to have this discussion

because as we know despite the fact that

different types of exercise can be used

to trigger different types of adaptation

such as increased long distance

endurance

anaerobic capacity strength hypertrophy

Etc

the workouts themselves are not actually

when the progress occurs when the

adaptation occurs and this to me is

extremely interesting because it

parallels what we see with so-called

neuroplasticity which is the nervous

system's ability to change in response

to experience we sit down to learn

something

we experience something

and that is the trigger for rewiring of

the nervous system but the actual

rewiring occurs away from the experience

or the learning

so too in Fitness and in exercise

recovery is where the Real Results

actually emerge where we get better

so I'd love for you to explain what

recovery really is

and the different types of recovery

certainly different ways to enhance

recovery and I'd also love for you to

explain whether or not there are ways

that people can become better at

recovering because if indeed recovery is

when progress emerges when we get better

well then anything that supports our

recovery and gets us better at

recovering

ought to increase our rate and our

degree of progress absolutely you nailed

it in the description what people really

want is some sort of change whether you

are talking athletes or general

population this change is uh some sort

of improvement in muscle function

reduction in body fat

higher functioning metabolism whatever

the case is and the only way that

happens is

we talk about the equation of stress

causes adaptation but as you alluded to

the piece in the middle is only if you

can recover from it and so the game

we're playing here is we all agree we

want more adaptation that means we need

to bring more stress into the system but

we then have to ensure that our recovery

outpaces

the stress input or else no adaptation

will occur in fact what happens is you

will actually be in a negative spot and

start going backwards and so what I

would love to do is is talk about how

we've handled this and I've had a decent

amount of experience here I was

fortunate enough to do my master's

degree in the laboratory of a gentleman

named Andy Frye who's an nsca Lifetime

Achievement Award winner and he studied

in large part recovery over training

overuse overload in a lot of areas in

addition I've been fortunate enough to

work with individuals from high

functioning CEOs and Executives who have

little time for Recovery High job stress

to in to athletes uh and they think of

the example of pitchers in Major League

Baseball who have to recover in a matter

of four days that they can pitch again

at maximum velocity so I would love to

outline some of the tools and tactics

strategies that we use for all these

individuals give you some foundational

stuff and I would love to maybe actually

cover some things that most people have

never heard of some stuff you may not

have access to some technologies that we

use some biomarkers and then even a

whole bunch of things that are keeping

with the theme of your show here cost

free or extremely low cost so all those

strategies what I'd also like to do is

cover nutrition and supplementation and

fueling and hydration and things but

that's probably going to have to be

saved for an additional conversation

that we'll do in the next episode yes so

we will absolutely hold a conversation

about nutrition and supplementation

where you can educate us about all the

top Contour stuff all the way down to

the the fine details

I do have a question about recovery and

it's one that I think most people are

familiar with themselves

which is soreness

we think of it as a muscle soreness but

I was trained early on in my scientific

career to always question the

seemingly obvious so a couple of

questions about soreness first of all

what does soreness really reflect

is it really muscle soreness

it feels like it's in the muscles but

what other organ systems and tissues and

cell types does it involve and then I'm

particularly interested in this concept

or this experience that many of us

including myself

had which is delayed onset muscle

soreness why would it be that when we

are less in shape or when we perform a

movement that is extremely novel to us

the soreness seems to arrive after

a reasonable delay of maybe even a day

you know we're fine the next day but

then 48 hours later we are exceedingly

sore

and as we get more fit or more familiar

with the movement the soreness seems to

arrive earlier so I realized I just

asked you about three questions or more

first of all what is muscle soreness

at a seller level which sells which

organ systems and so forth what is it

mean if we are sore is something I know

we'll get into a little bit later and

then why the delayed onset muscle

soreness it's actually one question so

it's totally fine you answered all you

asked all three because I'm going to

actually answer number three which will

answer number two which will actually

answer number one

I'd love to tell you that I set it up

that way intentionally but uh I'm just

happy to hear that where I was unable to

be concise you are able to be concise

thank you

we are still learning a lot about this

area it's actually really difficult to

perform these studies anytime you ask a

question about something like pain

or soreness you're immediately talking

about perception

and there is obviously a physical

component to that and there's also

perception and so teasing those things

out is extraordinarily challenging that

said there has been a lot of work in

this area in fact probably um you may

have a show already out on pain or maybe

one's coming down the road we did an

episode on pain uh a while ago but it's

definitely time to revisit that

literature I also have some amazing

colleagues at Stanford who work on pain

both from the uh cellular molecular side

but also from the psychological side

about how our understanding of pain and

what we believe about pain shapes the

experience of pain and Pain Relief

amazing that's that stuff is incredibly

important and I'm glad we flagged that

and maybe we'll just call that good for

now they could come back later for

another one of your shows so that being

said

why does it happen uh 28 to 48 hours

after you exercise well that actually

should give you some Clues into what's

happening so the traditional dogma of

delayed onset muscle soreness is what

this is called is that it is a result of

quote unquote micro tears and the muscle

and so you can sort of think I challenge

the muscle there was some small tears in

there and I'm feeling the results of

that well in fact that certainly does

happen and it can happen that is not

what's explaining your muscle soreness

and in fact you can be quite sore

from exercise and have no measurable

amount of muscle damage

and so much like anything else when

we're in this idea of pain it's not a

one-to-one

explanation there are multiple factors

that are probably causing your

perception of pain muscle damage

can be one of them it is not the only

one and it is probably in my opinion

though this has yet to be shown

definitively

probably not even the leading cause of

it and so what's actually happening well

the reason is taking you 24 to 48 hours

is you can actually find various papers

literature reviews dating back in a

number of years now over a decade that

show these wonderful curves of an

inflammatory and immune response and we

don't need to necessarily go through the

entire physiology right now but

effectively what's happening is those

things have a little bit of a time delay

and so some of those steps happen

immediately like right when the exercise

is there and then some of them are

delayed six to 24 to 48 hours if you

know a little bit about this physiology

it's you have a combination of

neutrophils and macrophages and a bunch

of things happening and this has a Time

sequence so what happens is by the time

we get to this 28 to 48 hour window

now the muscle soreness kicks in

which wait a minute if I if this was a

result of my muscles being torn

and that happened immediately

wouldn't that pain start immediately

well the answer is it would and so that

that is your first clue that that's not

responsible for it when we look at that

immune response and we see that that is

actually Peak 24 to 48 hours later

and then that's the same time the pain

kicked in that's cooling you with the

problem so we have this immune response

happening in inflammation then all of a

sudden we start getting fluid

accumulation and now there are what are

called nociceptors and you're probably

very obviously you're very familiar with

these and these are pain receptors

what's actually interesting is we don't

necessarily know

a lot of information about how many pain

receptors are in muscle

they're not really in the belly in fact

this is why I can perform my muscle

biopsies and they don't really hurt you

mean in the belly of the muscle correct

yeah we do have pressure sensors though

and so if you change the volume of the

tissue you will respond to that very

very quickly so by enhancing swelling in

the actual muscle that is immediately

putting pressure

on those pressure receptors if you will

that's the signal so what's probably

happening here and I just I just hate to

give you another bone but a lot of

delayed on some muscle soreness is

probably just a neural feedback loop

rather than it is actual muscle damage

yeah it makes a lot of sense there's a

lot of interactions between the types of

neurons that control

touch sensation and pain sensation and

itch sensation in fact a lot of people

um kind of collapse itch and pain

together Bingo yeah you know that's

something it's painful and it itches is

a familiar thing for people mosquito

bites and such

um and of course there's the classic

gait theory of pain yeah which uh people

will be familiar with and then I'll

explain why I'm explaining this

um which is if you you something hurts

you know you Bonk your knee or you stub

your toe we tend to grab that body part

and try and rub it totally and that

rubbing is not a coincidental thing it

activates a set of uh touch sensors that

are that respond to kind of broad dull

touch

um and that actively inhibits through

the release of an inhibitory

neurotransmitter the fibers that control

the pain signal so anytime we rub a you

know like a charlie horse our leg or we

or we stub our toe and we you know we

wince and then we grab the tone we got

like squeezing it a little bit that's

actually deactivating or partially

inactivating the the pain mechanism so

the idea that uh a swelling response

would then trigger a neural response

that then would recruit the pain

receptor response here I'm using broad

broad brush

um Strokes here to explain this

um makes very good sense to me

um now and only now that you've

explained how this process works I can

actually even add more to that so

if you remember how muscles work so we

have to have some sort of signal from

the nervous system that has to actually

go in and tell the muscle to contract

well remember there are a few episodes

ago we covered the physiology here of

what's called a motor unit

okay well what I didn't explain to you

are called muscle spindles

and we have talked about proprioception

in an episode of before as well but we

never tied this picture together so let

me walk you through that really quickly

and it's going to tie this Loop into a

nice bow so what happens is

um this motor unit is is coming in from

what's called an alpha motor unit and

that's going to be innervating your

muscle fibers and that's going to tell

the muscle fibers to contract those are

typically spread out throughout the uh

all sides of the muscle in interior

exterior all over on the outside though

there is another type of muscle called a

muscle spindle now these are

non-contractiles so they don't have that

actin and myosin and they don't produce

Force they are responsive they are

proprioceptive so what that means is

they sense stretch and this is why for

example if you were to stretch a

hamstring and stretch any muscle group

it doesn't really matter or muscle

its innate response is to fire back to

close that distance and this is what

keeps you from say if you're leaning to

the right

you can imagine that the example we give

is if you're if you're standing on one

foot

and you start swaying to the right

all right let's say you're standing on

your right foot and this makes this

easier for folks and you start swaying

to the right like you're going to fall

on your right ear will hit the ground

the inside of your right calf muscle

will start being stretched the outside

will start being compressed right so the

stretch on the inside of the right calf

muscle will sense that stretch and it

will respond by Contracting that pulls

you back to the middle and stops you

from falling that's proprioception and

muscle spindles sense stretch and tell

you to contract the way that they work

is is through gamma motor neurons and so

these are sensory things so what's

happening is unlike when you tell your

muscle to contract it goes Alpha

to the muscle contract these muscle

spindles work such that it is oh I've

been stretched sends signal back to some

Central Point typically in the spinal

cord and we don't actually want to go

all the way up the brain we've got a

time delay this is why these are

subconscious autonomic right versus

somatic so the gamma is going to go back

to the central location and then come

back through the Alpha motor neurons

until it to contract so you have this

wonderful mechanism of sensing stretch

going back well one Theory that's been

put forward regarding muscle damage is

that the pressure is actually being

applied to those nerve endings of the

muscle spindles

and that's actually responsible for the

pain signal that's going back

and coming up to your brain and you're

registering that as pain rather than it

is actually in the the contractile units

so the muscle fibers that's a very

intriguing idea uh because

it would suggest that stretching muscles

in order to alleviate soreness might be

the exact incorrect thing to do yeah now

I'm not saying that's for sure for

certain I'm just building off the

mechanistic logic that we've laid out

here yeah really that you've laid out

here there's the more effective

principle based on exactly that which is

this is generally why low level movement

is effective at reducing acute soreness

because that's low-level contraction

with the muscles and you're going to

anti-stretch and get tissue out and get

fluid out

wow you're literally pumping it out of

the the cell yes and in our previous

episode where we were talking about

programming we're using the Wii but

let's be fair here where you were

educating us including me

um in the audience about different

structures for programming exercise

for specific adaptations Etc of the

month

week year scales Etc

we had a brief um discussion about the

fact that if one trains legs very hard

with resistance training you know some

heavy squatting or dead lifting it yeah

or and there's some soreness that

oftentimes doing some quote-unquote

lighter cardio or

um some uh low impact work the next day

or or any number of different things

that involve

um not high intensity

contractions of the muscles but that do

require contractions of the muscles that

it can alleviate soreness more quickly

than if one were to Simply lie around

and you know watch Netflix or something

yeah that's exactly right the um

to go back just a little bit as well the

if that's really the case

um the question is like where is this

inflammatory signal coming from and

while there's much to be learned there

there is a little bit of

information right now that suggests it's

potentially coming from free radicals

released from the mitochondria again

that may or may not hold up as more

research comes I'm not sure but if you

remember back to our uh conversation on

endurance so we talked about the

electron transport chain and aerobic

metabolism and regardless of whether or

not you're getting energy from

glycolysis

or carbohydrates remember they have to

be finished

through aerobic metabolism so even if

you're lifting weights

and you're using carbs for your fuel you

have got to finish that metabolism by

running it into the mitochondria and

Performing oxidative metabolism as a

result of that that electron transport

chain runs so theoretically if free

radicals which is which are

hyper-reactive oxygen species basically

they're oxygen molecules that are

missing in electrons so that they react

to a lot of things they're the opposite

of antioxidants by the way this is

the oxygen molecules with extra protons

so they can balance the charge if those

leak out that in and of itself is going

to be a massive inflammatory signal and

that's probably what signals the cause

of these neutrophils and macrophages and

kicks off this entire Cascade again I

believe we need more research there I

need to look into it maybe it's more

definitive than I that I know but that's

probably what's happening potentially

what's happening rather

causes that Cascade in Signal also

what you have is this combination of

well if that's the case why am I not

getting tremendous amount of muscle

damage when I do more aerobic based

exercise

well because you don't have the

mechanical tension pulling on the fibers

that's actually causing damage to the

cell wall that allows these free

radicals to escape the mitochondria and

the cell wall so that's the best we can

postulate at this moment as to why those

things are happening and then why again

low level exercise tends to enhance even

things like percussion so using either

instruments that put a low level of

vibration into your leg or like

pneumatic boots so you can massage all

these things are generally probably

helping because they're moving that

stuff out

a demon most specifically so pressure

comes off of those nerve endings and the

muscle spindles

and allows you to stop receiving that

signal of pain despite the fact that you

didn't actually regenerate tissue at all

yet

fascinating and I think

that beautifully frames where we're

headed next which is to talk about all

the different modes of recovery and how

to accelerate them and perhaps even how

to combine different forms of recovery

in order to become better at recovering

and in doing so make faster progress

with Fitness before we begin I'd like to

emphasize that this podcast is separate

from my teaching and research roles at

Stanford it is also separate from Dr

Andy galpin's teaching and research

roles at Cal State Fullerton it is

however part of our desire and effort to

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150 at checkout so to kick off this

discussion about recovery

and with the understanding that recovery

is when the specific adaptations to

exercise actually occur

I'd love for you to share with us what

happens or needs to happen during

recovery in order for us to get better

at anything endurance strength Etc

but also how specific types of exercise

stimuli and specific types of

adaptations that we trigger so running a

bit further lifting a bit more weight

slowing the Cadence of a given movement

Etc how those specific types of triggers

for adaptation relate to the specific or

maybe similar types of recovery that are

required for us to make progress in one

of our previous episodes we were talking

about how the Harvard fatigue lab really

identified this idea of homeostasis or

at least sort of championed it for it

and that's important because

and all levels physiology wants to

return to homeostasis so what happens in

terms of adaptation is you've challenged

it to a level that it realizes if it

does not make a change it will not be

able to get back to the same level of

homeostasis that's fundamentally what's

happening that is recovery that process

of taking an insult being temporarily

reduced in functionality

causing a change so that now we come

back and get what we often call in

support performance super compensation

all that really is doing though is

bringing you to a new level of

homeostasis effectively

it is understanding if that same insult

comes again

I need to be able to make sure that that

doesn't cause the same level of

disruption and so we raise the bar

whether this is enhancing our ability to

take the same level of mechanical

tension on the muscle and not result in

micro damage whether this is being able

to take the same reduction in energy and

not have that compromise of sleep or

anything it's really fundamentally

changing so we can have a new level of

homeostasis because it's presuming it's

predicting that that same insult is

going to come again down the road

I wanted to clarify for people that when

Dr Galvin says insult

while he may actually insult me

um insult is the nerd speak terminology

for some sort of damage inflicted to a

tissue or system so

um he's speaking about the insult to the

muscle or insult to the neuromuscular

connection created by adding more weight

to the bar running a further distance

um

running a bit fast or or pedaling faster

that creates a micro insult or an insult

and now because everyone is familiar

with um psychological and verbal insults

you'll never forget that biological

concept it's important we tag another

thing here which is called hormesis it's

one of my favorite phenomenon and it

effectively means this that there is a

dosage or toxicity

responds to almost everything and if you

think about this in the context of say

drugs what this means is if I gave you

10 milligrams of something

that it would be okay but if I give you

20 it'd be a problem and eventually if I

go up and give you enough this thing

turns toxic this is the case of

everything from cyanide where it can

actually be in small dosages in nature

in fact it's in many of the fruits that

you eat but it's not a dosage that it

doesn't matter if that dosage gets

higher though that actually can cause

problems and if it is high enough it can

actually kill you instantaneously

the back end of that though is because

you introduce this micro insult as you

framed it for me perfectly your body

will then adapt to it and that's really

what's happening with exercise

adaptation is it is a hormetic stressor

and why that's important is

if you look at the immediate responses

to exercise you see an extremely large

increase in inflammation you see

oxidative stress you see a whole Cascade

of autophagy like all these problems

quote unquote happening it's what's

actually quite funny here is as a part

of my PhD the academic portion I had to

go through the medical side of the

school and so I was my physiology class

was in med school so I'm the only

non-medical doctor in that class right

I'm a PhD so I leave my lab I walk

across campus and I take physiology

class with these folks and I died the

whole time internally because every time

we would cover a new area

it was basically the the exact same

value or number

in a medical setting is like oh my gosh

they're going to die

and in performance setting is like this

person's in fantastic shape

is I I I've never it still amuses me to

this day obviously because it's just

simple things like total blood volume

right and you cover like okay if you

have a patient come in and their blood

volume is six liters you know I can

immediately get them on a diuretic of

some sort because they're going to have

a heart attack as blood pressure gets up

right now I'm immediately thinking damn

six leaders that that person is super

fit because that is actually a positive

adaptation to training it's one of the

most important if not the most important

adaptation to endurance training is

enhance total blood volume so you'll

store more blood in your body when

you're more fit than you are less fit so

I mean I could go on all these things

sodium concentrations potassium

concentrations are like you look at

these things on paper and you don't know

if that person is about to die because

they're 65 years old and out of shape or

if that person is going to break a world

record the marathon this brings up a

very important tangent which is uh for

instance if you go and take a blood test

and you are somebody who exercises very

intensely uh with resistance training

you're blood creatinine levels can be

way out of range and if your physician

doesn't know that you're doing certain

forms of exercise might say wow there's

a lot of muscle tissue damage occurring

in your body yeah as you mentioned

before your total blood volume is is

dangerously High when in fact you are

far healthier and and need much fitter

than the person who as numbers would be

in range that said obviously there are

um limits to these to these statements

whereby you would want to be cautious

and take action to ameliorate a very

elevated blood creatinine level or

something of that sort but the point

you're you're bringing up is is also one

about the field of medicine which is

that

many not all but many Physicians don't

take into consideration uh the outside

activities that people are doing and so

it becomes a kind of a plug-and-play

type um type way of looking at blood

charts yeah we've done many thousand

athletes blood chemistry and uh we we

don't use

first of all we never look at disease

stuff that's not what we do we take

people that are healthy and try to

optimize performance and blood chemistry

is one of the best tools if you really

understand what you're doing there you

can get some incredibly powerful

information out of blood chemistry that

actually relates to what we're going to

talk to today in terms of measuring

everything from acute to Chronic

dehydration to sleep deprivation can be

identified in in blood chemistry to

optimization improvements in nutrition

supplementation there's a lot you can

get there if people are interested in

that field I would Point them to a

gentleman named Dan Garner it was just

an absolute Juggernaut and wizard in

blood chemistry for high performance but

well you can get a ton of information

from that if you understand the

difference between exactly what you

talked about looking for signals of

increased risk of cardiovascular events

25 years down the road versus is this

the optimal value for high performance

in an athlete which is what our our

database and all of our software and

stuff does is only looking for those

things so I'm going to talk about some

of the biomarkers to look for a little

bit later salivary so some blood stuff

but we'll maybe save that part of the

conversation for down the road tell me

about different time scales of recovery

sure this is actually where I was trying

to answer your question for and then I

got myself way off track but the reason

I brought up the Hermetic thing is if

you understand that some things in the

acute say 24 to 40 hour period

look terrible

it's actually fine right so this is the

stimuli that's causing adaptation so the

reason I brought up the medical

exchange there is because you if you

looked at inflammatory markers and then

you mentioned some of them you would see

that they are highest acute within

seconds to minutes to hours after

exercise however that's exactly the

stimuli needed to bring them down

chronically

okay and so chronically meaning maybe in

that moment they are elevated and then

maybe they're coming down 24 hours later

in 48 hours however if you were to

compare your resting level say that

Monday before you worked out

to your resting level that Monday the

week following the week following that

what you would probably see is your

Baseline inflammation goes down

and so we got to be really careful are

we talking immediately post-exercise man

these markers look terrible maybe my

recovery score is awful

Etc that's not necessarily a bad thing

because what we're like looking to do is

to not only change what's happening

today but we're trying to cause

adaptation that may take us weeks or

months to actually

access

I love that you're highlighting this

principle because one of the more

obvious ones to me now that you've said

this is heart rate absolutely my heart

rate goes very very high during exercise

and I do that fairly consistently or

even semi-consistently my resting heart

rate will actually be quite a bit lower

that's a fantastic example really what

you're getting at here is this concept

where I think it's important to

differentiate between adaptation and

optimization

now we hear that word and I use it and

most scientists hate it but it's a good

communication tool optimization

if you're optimizing for the current

moment

you're almost surely compromising the

late adaptation

right if if I were to say do the thing

right now that makes you feel the

absolute best in the world and you're

like great you took a nap and you had a

donut like awesome you feel amazing but

you know it's causing long-term issues

the same can be said on the back end if

you're never choosing things that make

you better right now

you're never actually going to see an

adaptation so what we're really doing

with this recovery conversation is

playing this game of balancing immediate

gratification with the leg gratification

and how do we identify how much to do

now versus not how do I use a value or a

marker whether this is how tired I feel

today how sore I am today versus a score

on an app or a tracking metric but this

is a blood marker anything and

understand if that's what I need to

cause the adaptation I want a week a

month three months from now in the case

of

some of our other athletes it's even up

to four years right we're trying to

cause adaptations that will get us where

we want to get in the Olympics or World

Championships or World Cup or wherever

we're going to be so that's the

framework we have to think about

recovery we we maybe falsely think about

it as I need to maximize my recovery

today

and you could do something like

taken anti-inflammatory whether this is

a supplementation or a drug or maybe

this is ice

oh cool that's great that will enhance

your recovery in this moment that'll

make you feel better today probably

tomorrow but what we know is that blocks

the signal for adaptation so you're not

going to get the same results you know

four six eight weeks from now so when we

talk about recovery we have to

understand what tool am I using and why

and in order to do that we have to

understand what am I training for

and what am I trying to maximize if I am

in the middle of a season with an

athlete and we are competing tomorrow I

am going to head towards acute recovery

right because I have to actuate that

performance right now if I am starting

the off season

I'm not hedging towards recovery I'm

actually hedging towards adaptation so

we're not going to deploy any of these

especially things like

there's evidence that a combination of

vitamin C and vitamin E

will blunt hypertrophic adaptations

because they're anti-inflammatory with

antioxidants right other other Studies

have shown maybe they don't have

uh an inhibitory fact they may or may

not

point is conceptually

you want to be careful of what you're

trying to optimize for and you have to

have that forethought and that alone is

going to dictate your decision making

with whether or not again you get in the

eyes uh you do that now we will cover

some tools like massage

that are pretty fine to use you don't

have to worry about those blocking

long-term adaptation but others you're

going to want to be very careful about

so this principle that you've laid out

for us

which is that there's a set of events

that occur during exercise that trigger

the adaptation

and that sets in motion a number of

adaptations that occur during recovery

that then

give us the exact opposite response to

what the trigger was so I'll go back to

the heart rate example

um heart rate is close to maximal or

maximal you do that enough times within

a short you know a week or so or two

weeks and you're

resting heart rate goes down

as I recall a few episodes ago you said

that your maximum heart rate doesn't

really change that much is that correct

yes okay but your resting heart rate can

go down quite a bit yep

is that a general theme meaning

do we have a more or less set upper

limit or ceiling for things like

inflammatory markers for heart rate

maybe even things like stress and what

we do when we deliberately trigger

stress or a

dramatic increase in heart rate or

dramatic increase in inflammatory

markers is that we are lowering the

floor but that the ceiling Remains the

Same

it's very dependent upon the marker so

in the case of maximum heart rate it

will not change

with the exception of one thing which is

age

brings it down training will not change

it up in most circumstances if you look

at something like an inflammatory

response I suppose theoretically there

is a ceiling though I'm not aware of it

um I can tell you right now looking at

blood markers the things like creatine

kinase so remember the conversation

about

metabolism and with that we use the

phosphocreatine as one of our primary

fuel sources for explosive exercise well

if we're using phosphocreatine this

creatine kinase remember kinase are

enzymes that that function to break

things down for the most part so

creatine kinase is the enzyme you use to

break down creatine when you do that a

lot then that creatine kinase gets out

of muscle

and seeps into the blood myoglobin is

actually another fantastic marker by the

way myoglobin is if you think about

hemoglobin being in blood is the

molecule that carries oxygen around when

it's in the muscle tissue then it's

myoglobin mild meaning muscle and it's

the same globulin thing so there's a

bunch of markers you can look at muscle

breakdown and one of the things that you

can see is a creatine kinase level

that's elevated after say

um one bout of exercise and and you

might it might be up

you know five or six-fold I've actually

seen this number in offensive lineman in

the NFL be something like 500 plus fold

so even within just one category to the

next that number can get extraordinarily

high and if you know this is actually

one in an important Point here

if you're paying attention to any

mechanistic research or you use you're

using that to inform your decision

making you have to be extraordinarily

careful of magnitude

and what I mean by that is

if I were to be running a western blot

looking at a signaling protein

um and a muscle uh did this activation

of this protein turn on mitochondrial

biogenesis and I saw that whatever

intervention we gave it whether it was a

nutrition thing or a drug or an exercise

and I saw that that signaling protein

increased by 20 percent

I would basically assume that to be

totally physiologically irrelevant

because in order for that to be

important it totally depends on the

market you're looking at but

you some markers I might need to see

four or five six hundred fold increase

before I know that that will actually be

enough to be what we call

physiologically relevant others if

they're up one or two percent that is

relevant and so you really want to be

careful when you're either reading

papers or looking at Social Media stuff

if people are just talking about this

marker increase this much it may not

matter it may be totally irrelevant

physiologically and so you have to that

does also if you're wondering like how

the hell are the all these people well

that's how they can trick you a little

bit and intentionally or not it could be

just they're trying their best but they

don't really understand that area enough

and so that's an important point to pay

attention to so to answer your question

again fully

it would be hard to determine if there

was truly a maximum level

um some things don't want to move

like blood pH

it doesn't really want to move the range

that you're going to move from is you

know like 6.8 to 7.4 and if you get up

to like 7.9 like you're probably in big

big big trouble other things again can

go up 500 5 000 fold and so the markers

will really determine that answer

well at some point in the future I'd

love to continue this discussion around

the topic of stress specifically yeah um

and maybe we will get into that a little

bit later today when we um get into the

use of deliberate cold exposure

because that's certainly

um has effects related directly to

temperature on tissue but it certainly

has mental effects in terms of raising

one's level of perceived pain it's fun

um where some people love it and some

people love it for the feeling they get

during it

um deliberate cold exposure some people

only like it for the feeling that they

get after it not unlike exercise totally

I love to train I love exercise but I

know many people who uh um they loathe

exercise but they love the feeling

afterward so this will be a theme that

we will come back to

thank you for indulging my interest in

that semi-tangent I think it's a

relevant tangent if there is such a

thing if you can now return us to the

different time scales yeah and modes of

recovery because I think where we are

headed is how to get better at recovery

yep let's talk about the tools let's

talk about what to measure and identify

for all four of these distinct levels so

level one is what we call overload and

just very quickly what that means is I

did a workout today

the sign and symptom of overload is your

fatigued acute performance is down so I

worked out hard right now

if I were to go try to do a maximum

effort I would be reduced in my ability

the recovery period for acute overload

is minutes to days

right that's generally what we call

acute overload and that's what we're

looking for right so we systems should

theoretically see that hormetic stressor

come back in response come back bigger

better more efficient Etc

if you were to continue training in that

state like most of us do and say I did a

workout today I had a little bit of

acute overload gonna work out again

tomorrow a little more acute overload

can work out the next day a little more

acute overload even if you took a day in

between it's that doesn't matter right

you just continue these acute bouts of

insult

then you're going to be pushing into the

absolute golden Target

which is what we call functional

overreaching

so you have over reached

what you can currently do and it results

in a functional outcome and what we mean

functionally here is performance is

enhanced

and again performance being whatever you

deem it to be you're stronger

you've enhanced muscle size your

mitochondria has improved you've

whatever the thing is it's not just a

physical performance thing right

amazing

recovery time for functional

overreaching is typically a few days to

maybe even a week or so

and so typically what we see happen is

prior to a competition individuals will

do what we call a taper which is a

reduced training volume

for some short period of time and there

was the reason they do that is to again

actualize is the phrase We year is here

the adaptations and so you worked hard

for six weeks and you know theoretically

the workouts you did three four five six

weeks ago once you allow the system to

recover

will be actualized which means your

performance will be enhanced here so

functional overreaching is the golden

Target okay if you were to be at the

point of functional overreaching and you

continue to train so it intensified

whether this was through intensity this

through volume or really as we said

earlier you had something holding back

your recovery it doesn't really matter

right it's it's sort of two sides of the

same coin

then you would move into what we call

non-functional overreaching so you've

over reached again but now it is

non-functional as in you did not see a

positive benefit once recovery allowed

this typically means you have weeks it

takes weeks to come back from and you

basically just get back to Baseline and

this is where a lot of folks are who end

up in this vicious cycle and so you're

like man I'm not getting the results I

want I'm going to train harder I'm not

getting results I want I'm going to

train harder and harder but because

you've caught recovery isn't improved

you just end up in the same spot so then

you train more and you end up the same

spot and you end up then just either

blowing up or quitting and you're not

getting where you want

if you were to continue past that point

you may actually be in what we actually

call over training and that typically is

a considered to be over trained if it

takes months to recover from so most

people think they're over trained are

really not you're just probably

non-functionally overreached

and again classic distinction is if you

took three or four days off and you felt

better you weren't probably quote

unquote over trained you were probably

just in this area of non-functional

reaching you need a little bit of a back

off if you and this has been the case

I've had this happen with gymnasts and a

cheerleader and some other things where

they take a month off and we're barely

seeing them start to come back to their

Baseline numbers in any number of areas

mood desire to train testosterone

cortisol ratios biomarkers in a number

of areas physical performance vertical

jump height like all these things they

just start to get back to Baseline so

over true over training is actually

quite rare non-functional overreaching

is much more common

and it is a shorter time frame scale so

when we talk about recovery those are

the four pieces that we're really

thinking about and so if you are

concerned about oh I'm super sore how do

I get less sore how do I either not be a

sore

next time I do that same workout or I'm

super sorry now how do I recover those

are playing in that first category of

overload and we can certainly talk about

how to figure that out but the quick

answer is

you got to go back to our previous

episodes and just pay attention to the

volume intensity recommendations

if you're getting significantly uh more

damage or fatigue in a workout you

probably have increased your volume too

quickly

or something else is dragging your

stress bucket down but generally this is

a problem of training

um you either didn't warm up

sufficiently you're fueling strategy is

off which we'll talk about in The Next

Episode or you've violated one of our

principles of increasing intensity and

volume sort of too quickly

if it's past that and you're getting to

a stage where you're just like I'm

feeling beat up all the time my energy

is going down I'm just not feeling like

I'm recovered now we're in this

overreaching stage so the the story I

kind of tell here always is a few years

ago I was working

and my wife Natasha was in the garage

training and I'm doing something and

like she comes stumbling

and she has this look on her eyes and

they're like her eyeballs are giant

she's just like wobbling and she's like

I effed up I was like what do you mean

you like effed up and she's just like

I read the program wrong and she's like

Trump like what'd you do like she was

supposed to be doing 10 sets of three

every minute on the minute and she did

three sets of ten every minute on the

minute

and she was absolutely wrecked she

couldn't move for a few hours afterwards

and then for days she's just like you

have to handle the kids like I can't get

out of bed I can't move so that was like

a classic example of all right like we

don't need to fix recovery here you're

just a dummy and you did the dream way

too hard too long like this is not we

don't have a problem here so if it's a

situation like that it's generally you

just the program was way off if it's

constantly happening where you're just

like man like for whatever reason every

once in a while I'm getting really sore

or having a really bad performance in

these workouts then we need to go to our

other stress bucket take a look at our

allostatic load or allostasis and get

figured out what's happening there um so

those are the the easy ways to flag

acute overload problems

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huberman to claim the special offer I'm

happy that you pointed out the

distinction between functional

overreaching over training and being

over trained I think one one common

mistake that people make in thinking

about biology generally is that they

think in terms of nouns and adjectives

and not verbs amazing I love that so

much you know biology is a collection of

processes or processes depending on who

you are and where you live and who you

trained with

being over trained

is a state that in many ways is an

adjective you're over trained I'm over

trained

it's like saying uh you know I'm an

American I'm a you know Czechoslovakian

whatever it happens to be right and in

many ways people do start to associate

with an identity at least a transient

identity and they start making all sorts

of decisions it sounds like about what

sorts of verbs they will and will not

engage in whereas I think if we look at

things as processes and we

assign verbs to them then we can say

okay I'm

functionally overreaching

or I'm truly over training which is a

matter of degrees correct right or under

training for that matter I'm not I'm

reaching but I'm not

functionally reaching it's just it's

just performance and you know just as

with the nervous system won't change

unless you give it a reason to this is

the reason why if you can perform

something perfectly or speak a language

perfectly there's there's no rewiring of

the nervous system this myth that we've

all been told that every experience

rewires your nervous system it's

different now than it was two seconds

ago that's that's a ridiculous illogical

statement we know that's not true if

your nervous system can perform

something it has no reason to change and

it won't muscles the same way this is

why you have to progressively overload

you have to learn something new or

challenge your muscle to do something

new it's same thing so in the example

that you gave uh with your wife doing

this workout that turned out to be far

more strenuous she had functionally

overreach in some sense she might have

been over training or heading in the

direction of over training but the

mistake would be to assume that

she was over trained right as I kind of

it's almost becomes a bit of a state or

a character assignment

um as opposed to a verb and in any case

there's no perfect way to describe this

we're talking about nouns and adjectives

and and we're also um talking about

verbs but I think the verbs are really

anchored down in processes and things

that we do actions that we can take and

so um if I may I'd like to just

highlight this this idea of

shifting one sinking towards verb

actions

rather than labels on the state that we

happen to be in or the person that we

happen to be right sometimes it even

does become kind of character logical in

the way that people describe it and uh

so I have to believe that there is

something called over training that over

training is real in other words but that

we don't ever really know if we're over

trained

you nailed it there's there's no you

know it's not like a red flag uh you

know shoots up out of your shoulder and

say I'm over trained you know it's

um so in doing so I hope that we can

start thinking about some of the verbs

the actions that we can all take in

order to ensure that we stimulate

Progressive overload one way or another

and at the same time that we don't fall

into these bins of character assignment

where suddenly we decide that we need to

do X like take a month off or something

like that because I I'm beginning to

realize

um from our discussion that that's

exactly the wrong way to go those are

fantastic points I want to make sure it

is clear

that there is no clinical diagnosis for

over training there are no standards

there's no test or a blood panel you can

pull that would actually identify you in

that state so your your distinction Here

Andrew of these are verbs and rather

than nouns is is so wonderful because

that is exactly the case the only way we

could really come retroactively diagnose

one with over training is if again we

had you did weeks

of recovery and you only got back to

Baseline so we can't do it in the moment

I can't take a single test

there's no subjective marker or anything

that says you are over trained it is

simply you are probably over training

and we need to reverse that quickly or

in the case of the step before you are

probably non-functionally overreaching

and if you continue to do this you will

probably enter a new stage where this is

you're over training and we need to come

back so that's an important thing to let

people know is there's no one thing we

could actually point to that says you

are here you are not a noun this is a

verb so what are some tools that we can

use to enhance our recovery yep let's

start off with that acute overload phase

so in other words I just did a workout

and I'm feeling awful or I just did one

two days ago and I'm super sore how do I

get rid of that right now well there's a

couple of things you can do immediately

after your workout and then others that

are maybe more actionable a day later or

two days later and we'll just cover

handful of them we'll do some nutrition

and hydration and supplementation in the

next episode I'm going to cover

everything else not in that category

right now so a couple of things number

one

you can actually start Kickstart that

recovery process at the end of your

current training session and I guess I

should say it this way

I strongly suggest you start this

recovery process immediately after the

workout you mentioned earlier about this

idea of

you got to get a really high peak of

stress to cause adaptation but I

actually didn't explain that correctly

because what has to happen is you need

that extremely high peak but you then

you have to be met with an extremely

sharp recovery back down and so you know

you've talked about this before in some

of your neuroplasticity stuff and in

terms of what has to happen that caused

the insult and then you immediately need

to be able to recover to make sure that

that causes changes in the brains same

thing happens here so we need a really

sharp and high inflammatory response and

then if you do not meet it with an

immediate recovery period

the signal won't be there to maximize

your results so what's that mean you can

actually do a couple of things number

one is actually listening to slow paced

music

there's evidence to suggest fast-paced

music may slow down your recovery and

slow pace when actually enhance it so if

you just change from you know your

maximum get you up and get going music

during the workout to a slower lower

Cadence that will help you kick start

the idea of a similar note you can also

use what we call down regulation

breathing you could do them in

conjunction or one or the other

whichever is up to you so my personal

favorite method here is somewhere

between three to ten minutes of

finishing your training session laying

down I'd like to be in that position you

could certainly do it in the Lotus

position but I think laying on your back

is generally more effective personal

preference there no science I like the

items being covered getting into this

dark quiet sort of area

and then just breathing through your

nose in a structured Cadence there's a

lot of different things you can try an

easy example is just box breathing so

and you can imagine box having four

squares so what you're going to do is

inhale for somewhere between like three

to eight seconds and whatever number you

choose you keep that same tempo and so

let's say you chose to do a five second

inhale

that's going to take you up vertically

and then horizontally for your box is a

five second hold

and then a five second exhale

and then a five second hold and you just

need to repeat that for the time domain

now I typically honestly don't use a

timer

you'll actually notice a lot of people

will like fall asleep or get really

close to falling asleep in this period

you can do a triangle version of that

where you do an inhale

hold exhale and then go right back into

your inhale or up there's a bunch of

different tricks you can try here you

need to play around and see what

actually works best for you

um 10 minutes is probably better but if

you can just at least give me three

that'll work if you're really really

resistant you can actually do that just

in the shower and so if you're gonna

finish your workout get in the shower

again just close your eyes in the shower

give me three minutes of focused

relaxation breathing and that will

accelerate the recovery process I love

it and I particularly love it because my

laboratory works on stress and

respiration okay breathing and the

interactions between the two

and I'll just mention a result that was

just accepted for publication so should

be out by time this day so there's uh

thank you uh this is the beautiful work

of uh not me directly although it took

place in my lab but as we know it's the

students at both doctors of

um Dr Melise uh balbon uh in my lab it's

a phenomenal researcher

that showed that a short period of five

minutes of box breathing of exactly the

type that you described

or cyclic sign so two inhales followed

by an extended exhale to lungs empty

ideally the inhales are done through the

nose the exhales are done uh through the

mouth although it could all be done

through the nose

um or the mouth for that matter but

probably nose nose for inhale inhale

mouth for exhale or

um uh in inhales through the nose and

and exhale through the nose cyclic

sighing as we refer to it done for five

minutes both of those produce very

significant decreases in resting heart

rate

the over time will increase things like

heart rate variability and so on and so

forth

um so provided that there are extended

exhales it seems like the calming

response and the reduction in overall

stress occurs the only thing that really

sends things in the other direction

would be something like cyclic

hyperventilation I'm sure you've

observed that

um and interestingly uh when we had

people just do five minutes of

meditation which during which of course

they are breathing but they're just

allowing their breathing to progress

however it happens to be in that moment

um or moments across the five minutes uh

there were reductions in the same sorts

of markers of stress that I described

but not as significant as breathing so I

love the Brock's breathing tool post

workout

um and there's some other Alternatives

there too that I just mentioned but I

think people greatly underestimate the

potency of breathing for shifting one's

nervous system function away from stress

or if one wants toward more alertness

and stress I actually have a couple

questions for you on that sure I think

the audience would appreciate this uh

how long were those boxes was it just

user selected great question so we use

the carbon dioxide tolerance test

amazing in order for people to determine

how long the different sides of the Box

should be and you cover carbon dioxide

tolerance tests in a previous episode we

can provide a link to that clip um in

the show note captions but as you point

out it involves a long extended exhale

to lungs empty

um and of course people could sit with

lungs empty but they have to accurately

Faithfully as we say report how long it

took them to empty their lungs we use

that as a as a gauge typically if it

takes if people go to lungs empty in 20

seconds or less I believe I have to go

back to the paper and look but I believe

that the duration for each of the sides

of the boxes as it were was somewhere

between

um two and three seconds if they had a

CO2 discard time of anywhere from uh 20

seconds up to about 40 45 seconds we use

it the sides of the box where I believe

between four and six seconds and then

for people longer than them who could

discard their Arrow over a period of a

minute or more we used a box duration

that is inhale hold exhale hold duration

of somewhere between

I believe it was

[Music]

um

seven or maybe it was eight and as long

as 11 or 12 seconds yeah those will get

your kind of free diver types who can

really do this who are really well

trained for this sort of thing the don't

quote me exactly on those numbers but

that that was approximate those line up

exactly with what what we've done so I

believe it's it's going to be close

within seconds of non-important

Distinction is it's going to be close

enough so that's great and that was uh

it took them what six weeks so this

study was done over the period of a

month and then when they were swapped

into a new pattern of breathing

um condition or meditation condition and

this was all done in the natural world

as we say um they were wearing whoop

bands they were getting heart rate heart

rate variability sleep data subjective

data about mood Etc so there are a lot

of measures but this was

um more than 100 subjects out in the

wild of life

um and we tried as best we could to

track life stress events and exercise

and things like that that was harder to

control outside the laboratory really

all those results speak to exactly

exactly what you're describing here

which is that deliberate respiration

that involves controlled holds and

exhales really has a dramatic and very

immediate impact on reducing our levels

of stress that's wonderful I'm not

surprised at all with your findings and

what's really interesting about that is

you mentioned how the exhalation portion

is primarily responsible for the down

regulation and that's actually goes back

to our previous endurance conversation

which is that in general at rest at

non-altitude increases in CO2 are the

primary driver for ventilation and so

what that generally means is inhales are

associated with an uptick and

sympathetic State and exhales are

associated with a uptick of

parasympathetic State this is generally

why folks will do things like exhale and

finish that exhale right before they

perform a very high

Precision neurological tasks so if

you're going to say aim at a Target and

shoot you're going to Exhale fully and

then almost always execute that movement

at the end of the exhale because that's

when you're in your highest

parasympathetic State and lowest drive

for ventilation I have to say I'm not

surprised at all that you guys found

that there's actually other data that

point to individuals particularly after

endurance training that can get back

down to Baseline heart rate

is going to be correlated with who gets

the most actual results of their

training said that if you take a bunch

of individuals and put them through an

endurance training program and if you

measure how quickly they can get back

down to Baseline after each workout in

general those folks that are better at

that are going to see greater

improvements in performance at the end

of your say four or six or eight week

training block and so there's a little

bit of causation and correlation there

that we have to untie but I think it's

enough to say hey

if you invest these three and in your

case your your study was five minutes

it's only going to enhance recovery

you have a likelihood

of increasing the results from your

training and now we also have additional

benefits like being able to transition

more appropriately into our next task

going to work going to see family

whatever the thing is and it's it's a

nice close

to I asked you to be in a high

sympathetic State body and I asked you

to perform and to be under stress I gave

you recovery and now we're ready to

transition in our next thing so that we

don't take that exercise energy if you

will

into our next

task which may or may not want me in a

sympathetic Drive state so if somebody

is sore following a workout either

locally sore in a muscle group or group

of muscles maybe in their legs or chest

or torso or maybe their whole body is

sore

as it sometimes is the case

what are some tools that they can

Implement in order to accelerate the I

want to call it moving out of that

soreness but it's really as we know the

alleviation of the soreness through a

bunch of different processes what are

the most effective tools to push back on

that soreness and dissipate it yeah

absolutely

first of all it's not lactate that's

just a really important thing that we

still hear people talk about is you know

you're sore 24 hours later you got to do

this thing to get the lactate out of

there as we talked about in the

metabolism uh conversation and episode

that that is not the cause of fatigue

and it's certainly not the cause of

soreness so not an actionable tip there

but just a pet peeve of mine when I hear

people say that that I get irritated so

we can maybe end that conversation

um strategies tools

here's what you can do you can actually

wear compression gear that will help a

little bit there's a decent amount of

evidence suggesting if you just were to

you know put some tighter fitting

clothes on Leisure wear or compression

gear if you have it that can actually

prevent a little bit of soreness from

occurring so if you're in the case of

poor Natasha and you realize you've just

done way way too much or you went and

hung out with your bow hunting friend

and you trained way too hard and you

realize oh my goodness I'm going to be

very sore here you can immediately put

on compression gear and weigh that

really for as long as possible what are

some examples of compression gear I've

seen people on the plane with those high

high socks

um I mean anything that you wear

compression gear for what you do for

exercise so whether these are just you

know compression pants and leggings and

tight fitting leggings uh whether this

is a long sleeve shirt that's like a

rash guard you would wear in you know

Jiu Jitsu or surfing or something like

that as long as it's tight fitting it

doesn't have to be much more than that

you can wear I suppose you could get the

socks it would be great but we generally

just tell our leads them they've put on

a long sleeve compression shirts that

they would wear for their training and

then long compression leggings and

that'd be fine can people apply these

compression

um Garb after training and still get

some of the positive effects yeah I have

not seen any evidence to suggest that

that would block adaptation that may be

the case I I am not aware of those

studies if that happens but I certainly

know that the information suggests it

can hands a little bit of Muscle

Recovery but ideally one knows if they

are about to do a workout that could

trigger a lot of soreness yeah and then

where's compression gear of some sort to

offset that and if so

does it have to be local to the muscle

groups that you're working on the reason

I asked about the socks is my

understanding the socks uh the the

compression socks people were on the

plane is that it's going to shift the

patterns of blood flow not just in the

lower legs but all over the body yeah

you're probably going to want to focus

it on the actual exercising tissue

though actually that's a really good

question I don't know the answer of

whether or not you did an upper body

workout only or lower body compression

gear if that would actually help that's

a great question it may have been done I

don't know but I don't know the answer

to that in general we just

tell people like where where the whole

thing as much as you can um I actually

am not concerned that you're wearing it

during your workout

it is something you could put on

afterwards or even wear just a little

bit of compression the other day um

we've actually did a really fun study uh

I collaborated with

um Bill Kramer who's uh you know Sports

scientist of the Year award is the bill

Cramer award if that gives you an

indication out of uh University of

Connecticut as well as with Lee Brown so

two Lifetime Achievement Award winners

and we we put people on a plane in

stores Connecticut and flew them to Cal

State Fullerton so a cross-country

flight and some of them got to wear

compression gear during the flight and

others did not and then they landed in

California did a training bout put them

back on the plane went back to stores

and I think they did another training

bout when they got back there

there was a lot of data that came out of

that paper but one of the things that

was clear is the compression group was

effective

at handling some of the blood related

coagulation and other issues associated

with long flights and particularly

athletic performance so that's actually

a sneaky little Insider trick that I'll

use a lot with people particularly with

athletes that are traveling is just wear

that compression gear on the plane so

you talked about that and that sort of

rung that study to mind that as another

effective strategy so compression gear

in general as well as particularly on a

plane basically the tighter you can get

it the better without obviously making

your hands purple and being

uncomfortable and things like that so it

doesn't have to be overly tight anything

will work and probably help so I'm also

doing that personally anytime I'm taking

a flight like that as much as I can just

to feel a little better when I get there

so what are some other methods that we

can use to alleviate acute soreness well

if we continue down the same theme which

is saying okay we'll use some sort of

pressure manipulation to enhance

recovery

if compression is one strategy you can

also use things like compression boots

or garments and these are nomadic

devices that will you know pump uh air

outside you and compress back and forth

there's any number of devices that will

do this you can also use the physical

hand so this would be massage and body

work they're all really working as best

we can tell on the same mechanisms which

are effectively moving fluid in and out

of the tissue as well as potentially

enhancing blood flow increasing

capitalization and which is going to

only get nutrients in and waste products

out so you can kind of pick and choose

based upon your budget preferences

availability timing things like that so

those are all effective strategies

outside of that really is the next

largest category

which is now thermal and uh and so far

in this discussion we've mentioned cold

water immersion and I talked about in

the hypertrophy section how you would

not want to do that immediately post

exercise which would be getting into

cold water or an ice bath if you're

trying to grow muscle mass having said

that there is good evidence showing that

cold water immersion specifically is

effective at reducing muscle soreness

so it is a fair consideration and it's a

classic example of how there are no free

passes in physiology nothing is always

good or always bad it's always about

what are you willing to give up and

versus what you're willing to get and

the case of like cold water immersion

you may be thinking yeah I might want

some of the hypertrophic adaptations but

if you're in that phase of training

where you're actually trying to push

more towards optimization in that moment

rather than long-term adaptation then a

an ice bath might be a great choice in

addition if you fall into a scenario

like Natasha did and you realize like

I'm just so unbelievably sore this might

cost me three or four or five or six

days of training it might be worth it

for you to accelerate that recovery

process by a couple of days so that you

don't miss so much training so it's just

a it's an algorithm it's an equation

what am I looking for again if I'm in

season or trying to compete or if I have

just done way way too much exercise and

I am really in significant pain you

would probably be willing to give up

some small percentage of eventual muscle

growth after a single session to get out

of pain so of the cold strategies cold

water immersion is clearly the best

approach rather than cold air or some

other tactics so a cold shower is

probably not enough here you really do

want to be either in moderately cold

this is maybe 40 to 50 degree water for

probably north of 15 minutes or you can

be in sub 40 for as little as maybe five

minutes to get some of the fact there

and there's been a number of studies

um so I'm sort of summarizing a bunch of

that kind of into one rather than going

through them Point by point

the numbers you just threw out uh which

I'm assuming are um uh Fahrenheit

um seem seem really cold to me right

uncomfortably cold absolutely so I

always recommend that people ease into

it as a protocol overall that they not

immediately go to 35 degree uh cold

water if they've never done it before uh

that said once people are comfortable

being uncomfortable because I always

answer the question how cold should it

be exactly would you agree that it

should be very very cold so much so that

you really really want to get out but

that you're able to stay in safely

whatever that value happens to be you

absolutely need to be safe having said

that we have actually in our xbt

Retreats put dozens if not hundreds of

people at this point uh immediately in

the sub 35 degree water their first time

ever and done you know three minutes

multiple rounds in a session so they can

handle it but you don't need to go that

crazy if you don't want you kind of have

to play a game right do you want to be

really really cold for a short amount of

time or do you want to be like kind of

cold for a longer amount of time I

really the only mistake you can make is

doing something like you know 65 degree

water

which for most people is not very

comfortable and doing you know five or

ten minutes it's just not going to be

it's probably not going to be effective

so if you're like man 35 is is

absolutely crazy and you want to do 55

degree water and there's literature in

that area but it's going to say you need

to probably be there somewhere almost

really north of 10 minutes and some of

it will actually show you need to be in

there like well north of 20 to 30

minutes so for my money I would rather

go really really cold and get it done in

five minutes but um personal preference

on this one you can also make it a

little bit easier on yourself

there is not nearly as much evidence but

there is some on contrast stuff so uh

this is when you go cold hot and sort of

back and forth there are no really good

rules in terms of how much should you go

how many rounds how long and cold how

long and hot again there have been a

couple of studies but

and obviously those studies use numbers

but that doesn't mean those have been

tested to see what are optimal which is

a very big difference so you can really

just kind of play that by feel

hot is good for Recovery you just have

to be careful because you are going to

put more blood flow in the area and so

you may walk out of there with some

additional acute swelling which isn't

going to put greater pressure on there

so you have to kind of play with that I

personally

really like hot for Recovery I will feel

maybe not great in that moment but the

next day I tend to feel really really

good in addition if I wake up the next

morning and I'm really really hurting

and I'm super stiff a hot bath will help

that

um quite a bit so you can play with some

of those protocols again you don't have

to do nice there's absolutely no

requirement to do so it is just an

option if you're interested the studies

of Dr Susanna soberg sure yeah are not

directly aimed at alleviating soreness

or recovery they're more about

increasing thermal capacity by a storage

of uh Brown adipose tissue not the

blubbery fat but the stuff around the

clavicles and around the heart that help

you generate body heat at rest and

metabolism and so on and the numbers

there that

um she's come up with again have not

been tested against all the possible

derivations just like with breathing we

did five minute sessions but who knows

maybe a minute would have been equally

effective we just there are constraints

on these sorts of studies but the values

that she's come up with which seem to be

good thresholds for making sure that an

adaptation response is triggered by heat

and cold is it ends up being 57 minutes

per week total of uncomfortable but safe

heat in that case sauna and that can be

all in one session or breaking it up

into a couple of sessions on the same

day or different days and then 11

minutes per week of cold either in one

single session or multiple sessions

again one could do more

um one could break that up over you know

multiple days or do it all in one day or

do it all in one you know an hour in the

sauna and then 11 minutes in the colder

vice versa although that seems a little

bit extreme especially for the

uninitiated but those are the numbers

that have been studied but as you point

out there are not a lot of really

thorough studies examining different

cold protocols according to temperature

by time requirements so there is a bit

of subjective feel required to establish

a routine and I would actually say this

is another time to re-emphasize

something we talked about at the

beginning of our conversation which is

that pain itself is not a defined

outcome it's heavily influenced by your

perception and so if you don't feel like

they work for you they won't work if you

feel like they work fantastic they do so

it's a challenging field to get really

objective data on so there's always

going to be a little bit of

subjective nature to some of these

things I can tell you anecdotally we've

used hot and cold contrast for a long

time with athletes some love it some

don't care for it and everything in

between so it's one of those things

where

I never mandate it of course I can't

mandate anything for anyone I work with

but I'm never you know like hey are you

interested great you're struggling this

area do you want to try this you did and

you liked it great you're struggling in

this area and you tried it you didn't

love it okay fine I'm not we'll find

other routes as we will get into there's

a lot of ways to enhance recovery

um this is only one and it hasn't even

really come down to stopping the problem

in the first place we're not we're just

treating symptoms

which is first line of defense but you

really need to go back and figure out

why it's happening to begin with as a

solution these are just different again

acute symptom management tactics

one final point about uh deliberate cold

exposure I think worth mentioning is one

of the reasons the shower is effective

but not nearly as effective as cold

water immersion or immersion in ice up

to the neck is simply because of the

reason you stated before which is that

most showers are not going to get that

cold you're not going to get down you

know into the sub 40s also

cold showers haven't really been studied

that much they have but not nearly as

much as immersion and people always ask

why just think about the challenges of

studying cold water exposure in the

shower where you can't really control

for mango how much of the body is

covered whether or not the head stays

under different size bodies

Etc whereas when people come into a

laboratory they can get into a cold

large and we know where the neck is we

know where the chin is and we can make

sure that people's arms and um legs are

underneath but with cold shower sure you

can make everyone face away or toward

the shower but it's really tricky and

um for all the variations that were

described that said would you agree that

if one wants to use deliberate cold

exposure that cold shower is better than

nothing and cold immersion in

circulating cold water or ice bath is

better than um than cold shower yeah

what I'd actually say if you're looking

for recovery for muscle soreness I would

say cold shower is probably doing very

little because you're not going to be

able to get enough cold water onto any

muscle besides basically your head

so maybe you could try a cold bath

and so you'd at least get some surface

area coverage

but yeah if you want to use cold shower

for all the other awesome reasons to

cold shower that's totally great but if

you're trying to use that to recover

your low back and glutes from being sore

from training in a good way it's

probably not going to do much the the

immersion would be there you actually

also hit a sneaky other point which is

if you can't get your water super cold

just make the water move so if you have

Jets and stuff you can turn on and

anyone who's tried this and be like okay

I can do a 40 degree bath awesome try 60

when the water is moving right because

you break up the thermal layer normally

you have a little thin layer of water

that you're heating up you break that up

it's a whole new world yeah absolutely

so being very still in the cold water is

actually the weaker way to go correct

that you can make your face stoic but

make your body circulate some water

around you as long as we're on this

maybe just one more point about heat

uh I've certainly used sauna wet sauna

dry sauna steam saunas excuse me

jacuzzis can work pretty well yep um uh

males if you are looking to conceive in

the 60 days following uh uh following

sauna or

um hot tub do realize that it that both

those approaches do severely limit the

number of motile sperm um substantially

so for people that are not trying to

conceive uh don't think that this works

reliably enough that you could use it as

a form of contraception yeah but but for

people that are trying to conceive it

really is detrimental to sperm Health

right and so for that reason some people

bring an ice pack and put it on the

groin or near the groin when they go in

but um which is hard to do in a hot tub

than a sauna so here we're getting into

the fine points

um or crude points if you will pun

intended but um but the idea is that we

we wouldn't want anyone to approach

these techniques and compromise their

other life goals certainly not allowed

anywhere near these things when uh we

were at that stage of Life I'll just say

the Natasha put an x on me hanging out

with Laird so

for those reasons she's like you're not

going in you're not going none of this

stuff and I just had to wait right heat

um heat and sperm have have a

relationship but it's not one that's

positive for the sperm I'd like to take

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get 20 off are there ways to combine

the various types of stimuli that you

described for inducing recovery you

talked about breathing based tools which

while they could adjust and indeed do

adjust oxygen and carbon dioxide ratios

and

Etc I'm guessing the major effect of

those on recovery is going to be neural

it's going to be deliberate calm of the

nervous system more sympathetic based uh

as you mentioned yeah most definitely

and then you talked about some movement

based and touch-based approaches

um which will uh movement circulate

certainly will circulate blood but also

will generate contractions of the

muscles yep right which maybe if indeed

again it still speculates you if indeed

some of the soreness is due to excessive

stretch or swelling at the stretch ends

of the of the muscles

that would make sense so movement and

touch and then thermal are there ways to

to combine these

um that are more effective or maybe even

synergistic yeah I suppose you could

throw on uh

some compression garments put on a

Pneumatic compression device and sit in

the sauna while you down regulate your

breath like that would be fine

quite honestly though you probably don't

need

to maximize all of them we were joking

you could probably go for a light swim

while regulating your breathing in cold

water you get the compression from the

cold water and and you'd be in a good

spot so you could certainly do that the

reality of it is I generally look for

some physical

approach and then some holistic approach

of the breath work basically so I want

breath and then something else if you

knock those two things out you're in a

good spot so that could be breath while

you're in thermal stress so just

controlling and doing the unregulation

stuff you have to also remember ice is a

stressor

and I'll actually show you some data

here in a second about

how that actually can enhance

systemic recovery although it won't

happen in the in the acute minutes in

fact it's going to take at least 30 to

60 minutes and then you'll eventually

see a rebound effect but acutely it's

going to make you actually more

sympathetic which is going the other

direction he can do the opposite or it

can actually drive you up so it's a

little bit dependent upon how you

respond what time of day and how you're

using so in general I guess combining

them is

if you need it

um

depending on what you have what's

available so perhaps you don't have a

sauna but you can take a hot bath great

maybe you have some percussion device

some tool and you can use that but you

don't have a sauna amazing I don't have

ice bath these things so I think rather

than thinking about an optimal

combination of them I would say just use

a couple of the tactics based on what

you have and what is

easily available in your situation I'd

love for you to teach us about some of

the methods for longer form recovery as

it relates to overreaching and over

training sure you want to think about

this in a couple of phases phase one is

to try to prevent it from happening in

the first place

uh in terms of training load you're

going to just go back to our previous

episodes where we talk give you specific

instructions for how much to increase

your volume and intensity per week Etc

the other thing you can do then is do

some monitoring and I'll go over some

different tools some cost free ones as

well as some some higher technologically

demanding ones to monitor to see if it's

actually happening and then the third

approach here is what if this has

already occurred I figured it out I'm so

how do I get back out of that hole so I

would like to just sort of tackle these

one by one in order and talk about

what's happening what tools you can use

and why they're going to work all right

so anytime we're talking about fatigue

management here

most people are aware of these terms

because if you have any sort of

Technology you're probably getting some

sort of Readiness score or recovery

score or strain depending on which app

or watch or Tech you have you have a

little bit of vernacular change if

you're in the sport performance world

you might be looking at things again

like load or a GPS tracking and

monitoring and really all of it is is

doing the same thing

it's trying to either one

predict

a problem is going to happen in a future

and then placing restrictions upon you

so that you don't run into that

situation

the other thing is possibly doing is

identifying a drop in physiology or

performance and then saying we need to

get you out of this hole that's really

what's happening and so when we think of

the first one just imagine a scenario

like a mileage limitation uh pitch count

in baseball and what has happened there

is is you know individuals in those

fields have looked and said hey what we

notice is people who throw say more than

100 pitches in a game

tend to start losing Effectiveness and

increase injury rate therefore we're

predicting the next time you go to play

if you cross that threshold we start

having an increased risk of negative

consequences so therefore we're going to

cap your in this case pitching volume at

that hundred pitches per game or

whatever the case same thing with

running etc etc so you could just simply

do that and there's actually really cool

data coming out now on sport performance

stuff looking at things like I am using

GPS trackers and trying to identify even

position by position specific

recommendations for how much distance

you should cover in a practice in a

trending session

um so that you can say hey these

positions don't cross this threshold

these positions don't cross this

threshold in basketball and tennis and

all kinds of things like that that's not

probably extremely applicable to many of

the listeners right now but it is still

conveying the idea that if we understand

where we break then we can stop

ourselves from getting there in the

first place

the functional example here is just

thinking about basic things like where

do I start my training program and then

how do I progress it and we've already

covered those numbers in either case

though you want to have three markers

that you're paying attention to if

you're concerned you're getting into an

overreaching phase or potentially going

to lead to over training or you want to

get out as three unique things number

one

we're going to look for some sort of

performance metric right so this could

be your times are going down your your

squat numbers your your power is going

down any of these things so it's got to

be an actual performance number two some

sort of physiology and so I want to see

something happening with resting heart

rate some biomarker is moving heart rate

variability some other measure that is

not influenced by you and the beauty of

using biological markers are if we

contrast that to like performance

and I said okay here's our performance

test every day you come in you're going

to do a vertical jump

and if one day you come in all of a

sudden your vertical jump is super low

I might think oh man maybe we're

starting to overreach

you also could be feeling lazy that day

and just not have jumped very high on

purpose because you didn't want to work

out

the beauty of biomarkers are you don't

get to manipulate them like that they

don't care there's a downside to it

which is maybe they're just indirect

markers right and so

I'm not telling you biological markers

are better than performance markers what

I'm saying is you want to look at both

all right in fact you want to look at

our third category as well

which is some sort of symptomology

and so am I am I having a symptom of

overreaching

am I seeing a performance Sacrament and

then am I saying a biological marker as

well if you see all three of these

popping up you have reason to believe

you've reached some overt reaching

now what you have not identified yet is

if that is functional overreaching

non-functional overreaching or true over

training and remember you shouldn't be

feeling great after every training

session you're trying to cause

adaptation and until you back off maybe

even weeks or months later to actualize

the adaptation and get that super

compensation and performance increase

you're going to have to invest a little

bit so you're going to go in the hole

any sport performance coach is going to

look at numbers throughout the year and

say yeah when we first start training in

preparation for the season we are going

to see a drop in performance that day

that week that's part of the plan though

right that's the stress you're trying to

accumulate so you want to see all three

of those markers you just want to pay

attention to a couple of things how long

are they down for

a day three days seven days 15 days

Etc if you're seeing a performance drop

in a day

and I am far away from from performance

uh so the day that I want to Peak for

I'm not going to do anything different

if I see two days in a row drop

performance

I'm not worried if I see more than

probably in my opinion five days in a

row of decrement then I might start

paying attention

if you're in season though or close to

competition or whatever that thing means

to you

and you see more than a couple of days

in a row of dropping then you might

actually want to take some some steps to

mitigate that so it really is important

you understand again what are we trying

to do are we trying to cause adaptation

are we trying to cause adaptation and I

I have a very specific example of all

this we can run through uh here in a

second and then of course a bunch of

tools to to pull you out of those phases

but that's that's fundamentally what

we're trying to do here I would

encourage you again

don't be too reactive and responsive to

any one measure I'm going to cover a

whole bunch of them in a second

but you can get lost in in different

things because they all have pros and

cons and so

I know it's simple to just look at one

score in your watch and make your

decisions because of that or check your

app but you really want to be careful of

doing that you're going to probably lead

yourself in the wrong direction more

often than you're going to help yourself

I'm curious as to why when we overreach

too much or too often where we are over

training

that performance is diminished because

on the face of it it's kind of obvious

you're overreaching you're over training

so performance is diminished but that's

completely circular

you hear about things like adrenal

fatigue and adrenal burnout well it

turns out adrenal burnout doesn't even

really exist absolutely not there is a

such a thing as adrenal insufficiency

syndrome but of course you know these

phrases like burn out adrenal burnout

over training

um they're thrown around it you know as

much as words like gaslighting and

obsessive compulsive you know are

without any real clinical definition

um or there are clinical definitions but

people aren't obeying them when they use

the language I do want to acknowledge

however what is absolutely true which is