Dr. Andy Galpin: Optimize Your Training Program for Fitness & Longevity | Huberman Lab Guest Series

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Welcome to the Huberman Lab Guest

Series, where I and an expert guest

discuss science and science based tools for everyday life.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor

of neurobiology and ophthalmology

at Stanford School of Medicine.

Today's episode marks the fourth in the six episode

series on fitness, exercise, and performance.

And today's episode is all about optimal fitness programming,

that is how to design a fitness and exercise program that

can achieve the goals that you want for fitness and for sports

performance.

Dr. Andy Galpin, great to be back.

In previous episodes, you taught us

about the various adaptations that

occur at the level of cells, at the level of organs,

indeed at the level of the entire body that

underlie things like improvements and strength

and speed, hypertrophy, AKA muscle

growth, and the various forms of endurance.

And you laid out beautifully the various protocols

that one can do in order to achieve

each and every one of those adaptations.

Today I would love for you to teach us

how we can combine different protocols to achieve

multiple adaptations in parallel--

for instance, how to improve endurance and strength, how

to achieve some level of hypertrophy,

perhaps directed hypertrophy at specific muscle groups,

while also maintaining endurance and perhaps improving speed,

for instance.

And if you would, I'd love for you to tell us

how we can combine different protocols

and vary those across the week, across the month,

across the year so that we can make regular progress

and perhaps even could give us a window into the ways

to make the fastest progress possible.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah, I would love to do that.

We've invested a lot of time in the previous episodes

covering background and concepts and detail about the physiology

so you understood why you're making

the choices you're making and why other choices are

less effective.

In this discussion, I would actually

like to jump maybe more directly to the answer

and kind of get right into the protocol and maybe

a little bit less background.

If you're interested in that stuff,

I suppose you have to go backwards a little bit

and watch some of those previous episodes.

But I would love to jump in to just some samples, some case

studies, if you will, and kind of walk

through different protocols.

I know that over the course of my 11 years as a college

professor and being in the public space

a little bit, probably the most numerous style of question

I have gotten is exactly that.

So I know the rep range for this,

or I know the style of training for that adaptation.

But how do I put them together?

And I would just like to spend our time

today going through those things.

And the reason I want to do it is this.

Some people listening at home surely just love exercise.

They're already bought in.

And they're going to train no matter what.

And they're interested in just actually being more effective.

And so the way that you structure and put your plan

together will in large part determine

getting more progress for less effort

or actually being able to put the same amount of effort in

and getting results faster.

There's also some folks probably listening who are like,

OK, I exercise.

I do what I can.

I'm bought into the benefits that you've

talked so elaborately over the 100 plus episodes

you've done about the various benefits of exercise.

But you don't like--

you're kind of doing it because you know it's important.

But you're not there.

So for those folks, it's sort of like, OK,

how can we actually make this thing

more effective so we can make sure you hit the things you're

absolutely have to get for the short and long term benefits

to make sure that you're looking the way you want to look,

you're performing physically the way you want to perform,

and that you can do that across your lifespan?

So how can we give you all some structure

to where, again, you don't have to turn

into an absolute lover of physical fitness

and it doesn't have to take over your life

but you can still get more results for your same time

restrictions, whether that be two days a week

or five days a week or only certain access

to equipment or experience, whatever the case may be?

How can we help those folks as well put together

a protocol that will get them closer to their goals

with less restrictions?

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Fantastic.

And I'm hoping that along the way,

you'll also point us to how often to take the fitness

assessment for each of the adaptations

that you referred to in a previous episode.

We will also link to that fitness assessment segment

in the show note captions for this episode

because that fitness assessment for different adaptations,

I think, is a really powerful way for people

to touch in and see how much long endurance do they have,

how much anaerobic capacity do they have,

how much strength do they really have.

And then perhaps you'd also be willing to throw

in a couple of additional ways that we

can assess our level of fitness and progress

in this arc of fitness program across the year.

ANDY GALPIN: Amazing.

I can't wait to do that.

I think it is also important before we jump in

to acknowledge a lot of folks may be thinking to themselves,

I don't really necessarily need a plan.

Why do I have to do that?

I don't have a certain goal I'm going after.

I'm not running a race any time soon.

I'm not a competitive athlete.

I just-- I go to the gym, and I workout.

And that's great.

Well, I would like to try to convince you that regardless

of where you're at, having a plan will achieve

those things we just talked about,

which is more success in a shorter time frame.

There's actually a significant amount of research

to support this.

Those individuals who go on a specific training plan

compared to those who do not will

receive better results independent

of the effectiveness of the program.

So we've talked in previous episodes

about tons of different styles and strategies.

And to reiterate, it really doesn't

matter which one you pick.

The fact that you have a plan is always

more effective than not having a plan.

And so, again, even if you're not

planning on competing with something,

if you want to shorten the amount of time you're

in the gym, get more results from it,

I would strongly encourage to put something together.

The two largest reasons why people don't get results

with their fitness training protocol

is number one, adherence, and then

number two, some sort of progressive overload.

Both of those two things are challenging

to accomplish without a plan.

So the reason people don't go to the gym, one of them,

and one of the reasons why it takes

them so long is because they don't walk in

with a very specific plan.

It's sort of like going to the grocery store

and figuring out what you're going to buy

versus knowing exactly what you're

going to get in your shopping list, grabbing those things,

and getting out.

You'll notice your time in the grocery

store is half the length.

You're more productive.

And you didn't waste money on extra things.

So that alone will drive adherence

because you're now going to think to yourself, oh,

that 90-minute workout I do is actually really just 60.

And so now the next time you go to training you're like,

man, I don't have 90 minutes.

You realize it's only 60 or 40 or 30 or 20

or whatever it needs to be.

So that alone will get you there.

The second part of that which is overload.

It's very difficult to understand and remember, well,

the last time I did lat raises, I used I think 5 pounds.

And I think I did like 12.

Well, if you don't have some sort of system of tracking--

and this can be as simple as a notebook,

just writing down what you did before

and doing a little bit more the next time.

That is going to almost guarantee you success.

So having some structure-- and this structure can be fairly

loose, so we're going to talk about a bunch of different

examples--

is something I strongly encourage everyone

to utilize for their exercise.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: 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 bring zero cost to consumer information

about science and science-related tools

to the general public.

In keeping with that theme, we'd like

to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

Our first sponsor is Momentous.

Momentous make supplements of the absolute highest quality.

The Huberman Lab podcast is proud to be

partnering with Momentous for several important reasons.

First of all, as I mentioned, their supplements

are of extremely high quality.

Second of all, their supplements are generally

in single ingredient formulations.

If you're going to develop a supplementation protocol,

you're going to want to focus mainly on using

single ingredient formulations.

With single ingredient formulations,

you can devise the most logical and effective and cost

effective supplementation regimen for your goals.

In addition, Momentous supplements

ship internationally.

And this is, of course, important

because we realize that many of the Huberman Lab podcast

listeners reside outside the United States.

If you'd like to try the various supplements mentioned

on the Huberman Lab podcast, in particular supplements

for hormone health, for sleep optimization, for focus,

as well as a number of other things,

including exercise recovery, you can go to livemomentous--

spelled O-U-S--

so that's livemomentous.com/huberman.

Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep.

Eight sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating,

and sleep tracking capacity.

I've been using an Eight Sleep mattress

cover for about the last eight months.

And it has completely transformed my sleep.

I'm sleeping about the same amount.

But I'm sleeping far deeper.

And I'm now getting the proper ratios of so-called Rapid Eye

Movement or REM sleep and slow wave sleep

and waking up feeling far more recovered mentally

and physically.

The underlying mechanism for all that is very straightforward.

I've talked many times before on this podcast

and elsewhere about the critical relationship between sleep

and body temperature.

That is, in order to fall asleep at night,

your body needs to drop by about 1 to 3 degrees in terms

of core body temperature.

And waking up involves a 1 to 3 degree increase

in core body temperature.

With Eight Sleep mattress covers,

you can adjust the temperature of your sleeping environment

to be one temperature at the start of the night,

a different temperature in the middle of the night,

and a different temperature as you approach morning,

each of which can place you into the optimal stages of sleep

and have you waking up feeling more refreshed than ever.

If you'd like to try Eight Sleep,

you can go to eightsleep.com/huberman

and check out their Pod 3 cover and save $150 at checkout.

Eight Sleep currently ships in the USA,

Canada, United Kingdom, select countries in the EU,

and Australia.

Again, that's eightsleep.com/huberman to save

$150 at checkout.

So what sorts of things should people

be thinking about when developing an overall fitness

program?

ANDY GALPIN: A few minutes ago, we

were talking about how two of the major reasons people don't

get as much out of their training programs

as they would like is because of one, a lack of adherence,

and two, a lack of progressive overload.

So the solution to that is constructing

a plan that lives within your realistic limitations.

So I would like to walk you through my 10-step approach

to how I design training programs.

Now, before I do that, I think it is fair and important

for the audience to understand that this is simply

my approach.

I've been doing this a long time.

I played college football.

And I wrote my own training programs back then.

I have and am still working with professional athletes

in the PGA TOUR and the NFL, the NBA, Major League Baseball,

as well as a ton of general population folks.

So this is a combination of the evidence base

that we've been talking about in terms

of best practices for strength and conditioning

as well as just my years of experience.

So there are many, many ways one could do this.

I'm not even suggesting this is the best.

This is simply how I do it.

This is exactly how I handle it when

a new individual comes to me and how I teach my students.

So step number one is assessing properly and identifying

a training goal.

Now, that's actually sort of funny

because we hear that a lot.

But a lot of people actually never take that step,

not to call anybody in the room out.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: But what's happening here

is this morning Andy, Dr. Galpin,

and I were training together.

And he was providing amazing tips on form and set rep

cadence and the sort of thing.

And he said, so what's your training goal for the next 12

months?

And I paused.

And it turned into a very long pause because--

ANDY GALPIN: Which is an nice way

of saying he didn't have an answer.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I didn't have an answer.

Of course, I don't just want to maintain

what I've developed in terms of strength and hypertrophy

and endurance.

But I don't have a clear goal.

So I'm hoping that by the end of today's discussion,

I will be on track to a clear set of goals.

ANDY GALPIN: Amazing.

I'm not going to bore you all here.

But, really, I can't stress enough

how important that step really truly is to getting results.

The analogy we use here is if you left your house

and you were attempting to get to the grocery store

and you just started driving and if you drove

every possible route, you would eventually

get to a grocery store.

And so, yes, that can work.

A better approach is saying, here's where I am.

There's where I want to go.

What is the optimal route there?

And that's really what you're doing with goal.

So it is a boring setup.

It is not interesting to hear.

I don't have any real hacks or tricks for you.

But it is step number one on purpose.

We have to know exactly where we're going.

You can do this in two ways.

Way number one is to just pick something.

Arbitrarily decide I'm going to run a 5K.

Or I've done that before, and I want

to improve it by 10 seconds.

I want to lose 10 pounds.

You can just pick one.

That's great.

Another way is to run through that fitness testing protocol

we described a few episodes before.

And if you do that, you can see which of these areas that maybe

you have the largest lagging in.

Or what is the most severe performance anchor

is how we refer to it.

And then choose that as your primary goal.

So either option.

Some people come in to training programs

with a very clear goal in mind.

They want to add more muscle or whatever, whatever.

OK, great.

If you're like, I don't really know,

I just kind of work out, then run the fitness testing

protocol.

You'll see what score is the lowest end.

And then you'll maybe make that a priority for the next,

say, three months.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: So the first step

is to identify a specific or set of specific training goals.

ANDY GALPIN: A really nice tool for helping

you set a goal is a system called SMART.

Right now there's a little bit of debate

on what those acronyms actually stand for.

But we'll get close enough.

So SMART is often Specific, Measurable, Attainable,

Realistic, and Timely.

So starting off with S, specific, in general

the more specific your goal is, the higher likelihood

you will have at succeeding in that.

M, being measurable, means it needs

to be something that you can actually put a metric on.

So this can be objective or subjective.

But, generally, I like to have at least one objective measure.

So remembering objective is something

that is not based on feeling.

It is not up to you.

This could be something simple like your body weight.

It could be how much you can bench

press, what's your 1 mile time, whatever

is most important to you.

It actually doesn't have to be a fitness related goal.

For example, if you're using fitness

as a way to enhance your sleep, the main metric

you may be interested in is amount of hours slept.

It could be something like efficiency

or whatever is most interesting.

It could be work productivity.

It doesn't really matter.

So it doesn't have to actually be the fitness goal.

But what is the motivation of why you're doing it?

So that's specific, measurable.

Attainable or actionable, as is often described,

is something that is within your capability.

So attainable-- a bad example of attainable

is something like, my goal is to win more games.

That may not be up to you.

The other team you're playing, it

could influence it, the schedule, et cetera.

So attainable should be something

that is within your control.

Realistic or relevant to you is something

that is, again, something realistic that you can achieve.

You wouldn't want to make a goal that

is you want to double your body mass.

That is not going to happen.

So think about the constraints.

How old are you?

What's your training experience?

How much time do you really have to invest in this?

And then pick something that is realistic.

And then, honestly, my little twist

here is take that in minus 10%.

Because, typically, when people put together training programs,

their goal tends to be quite lofty.

And they get some small percentage of the way

and realize they're never going to get there and then back off.

We actually-- this sort of reminds me

of a classic deception study that we

did in my lab one time, where we took people

and we had them do this maximal front raise.

Basically, you held a dumbbell out in front of you for as long

as you possibly could.

And the goal here was actually-- it's a deception study.

So we're tricking them.

And so we said, OK, we want to just get

normative values to see how long people

can hold this front raise.

And I think we use something like 5% of their body weight.

And so they came in.

And they did it one time.

And we timed them.

They didn't get to see the clock.

They left.

And then we said, we've got to come back in and repeat it.

We got to do a couple of tries here

to get a normal value in case it's off, whatever.

Well, the participants were split up into four groups.

So group one actually was told that their time was 15% lower

than they actually got.

Group two was 5% lower.

Group three was 5% higher.

And group four was 15% higher.

So the second time they came in to do it,

our graduate student, quote unquote, "made a mistake"

and left the timer in front of them.

So the first time again they did the exercise,

they're just holding it.

They don't have any idea how long they're holding it.

The second time, they had a giant iPad

set like just a little bit off centered

where they can clearly see it.

So they watched the time go by.

And, of course, what happened was those folks, say,

who did 1 minute the very first time when they tested,

they came back in to do the second time.

And they're holding it.

And we told them they actually got

45 seconds, when in reality they had done a minute.

So they're holding it and holding it.

And they think they only did 45 seconds.

By the time they get to like second 40, 41, 42,

they get past 45.

They almost all quit, like 47, 48 seconds,

because they wanted to beat their previous score

but then were like, cool, I beat it.

And then they quit early.

So they were actually not yet to failure.

But they were just happy enough to beat

what they thought they'd done.

And then they quit.

The other group on the inverse side--

again, say they got a minute.

We told them they got a minute and 15 seconds.

They got to like 45 seconds, 50 seconds

and started realizing, oh, man, I have 30 more seconds to go.

And they quit way early because the carrot was way too far out.

They realized I'm never going to get there.

So I'm just going to stop now.

Can you guess which group did the best on the post-test?

ANDREW HUBERMAN: The ones that were just within about 5% of.

ANDY GALPIN: Totally.

So they wanted to improve.

And so, again, say, they got a minute the first time.

We told them they got a minute 5--

or, sorry, they got a minute 5 the first time.

We told them they only got a minute.

They actually exceeded that greatly

because they wanted the PR.

So making sure that goal is properly aligned,

it needs to be a little bit scary,

a little bit unrealistic.

You're going to have to work for this.

If it's too easy, you'll quit.

You won't feel like a challenge.

If it's too hard, though, you'll quit early as well.

So you want to make sure it's that reasonable balance of, ah,

should I train today?

Or like maybe I'll just go through--

if I do that, I'm not going to hit.

I got to get after it.

But not like, oh my God, like, there's just no chance here.

So you're going to walk away early.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: That's a fantastic study, I have to say.

It's very simple.

I think it illustrates a number of important psychological

principles about goal setting, motivation, self perception,

but also the dopamine system.

The dopamine system is this universal reward system

that-- meaning it doesn't only work

for food or only work for fitness goals

or only work for academic goals or relationship goals.

It is the universal substrate for all of that.

And I actually think there are some real gems of information

in that study design that you describe.

So just cue that for maybe a potential collaboration

between our laboratories because--

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah, absolutely.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: --I think it's very important.

But it does cue up another question relevant to fitness.

In particular, which is what are your thoughts

on intermediate goals?

So let's say my goal is to drop 2% of body fat

from where I am now a year from now.

So roll into the next year from now about 2% lower on body fat

but maintain my lean body mass or maybe even increase it.

How should I assess progress?

Because the dopamine system loves a goal.

It loves anticipation of a goal.

But it responds best to, we sort of re-up, if you will,

our dopamine any time we get a signal

that we are on the right track to that goal.

And that signal could be, OK, I did the workout.

I just trust that these workouts are going

to give me the result I want.

But, of course, we know that when

people get a glimmer of the idea or some objective feedback

that they're on the right path, that dopamine system really

fires and provides motivation for continuing

toward the ultimate goal.

And as we've talked about in the strength, speed,

and hypertrophy episode, resistance training

itself has this built into it because of the infusion

of blood into the muscles.

You actually get a little window into what

you might get in terms of an adaptation

simply by way of the so-called pump,

whereas endurance type work generally doesn't have that.

You don't see yourself get better drop back

and then adapting to actually get better.

But that's actually what you see with weight training.

So given all of that contour of the dopamine system, what

sorts of intermediate goals should I set for myself

or should somebody set for themselves?

And I realize it will probably depend on the ultimate goal.

But would you say check in on progress once every week,

every month, three months?

ANDY GALPIN: I don't know if you can tell the look on my face.

I love this question and this topic.

I spend so much time on my senior and graduate level

program design course.

I've been fortunate to work with a few athletes

where we've had multiple years.

And if you can really take the time to step back and go--

it's not about optimizing for the next six weeks.

And in this case, it's not the next fight.

It is the championship fight that we

need to get to in three years.

Or it is the Olympics, which are on a quad program.

You're really optimizing for that for a year.

If you can have that foresight and really think about that

and then work backwards, you can see some pretty tremendous

things.

The sort of saying that is we tend

to overestimate what we can get done

in a week and underestimate what can happen in a year.

That can be extraordinarily powerful.

However, you have to have those metrics called out ahead

of time because you will lose motivation in that short term

because you won't see that result immediately.

But if you remember, I'm on a path to 4% or 2%

or whatever you need to be, therefore, I only

need to be this far right now.

I need to be that far and then that far.

It's actually quite clear.

And so what we would actually do in that scenario,

not to go so off track here because I can really

go on this stuff, is--

let's say it was the year recommendation.

You're going to actually need to go to the last part of SMART,

which is timely.

So part of setting this goal is making

sure you understand the time domain responsible.

And it's actually quite great here

because, not to go Inception on us,

where we're like list within a list,

and Rob kills us over here.

But number one of this program design thing

was assessing your goal.

Number two is identifying your defender.

What I mean by that is, what is stopping you

from hitting that goal?

So you want to lose 2% body fat in the next year.

OK, great.

What's going to stop us?

Once we can achieve that, and we'll

go into more of that in a second,

then you just start walking that 2% backwards.

So you might have to go something like this.

Look, every time I start working out really hard,

I always get hurt.

Interesting.

OK, great.

So maybe instead of jumping really

hard into a high intensity interval training program,

knowing we're likely to hurt something or get burnt out

or quit or whatever the defender is for you, maybe

we invest something right now, which is maybe improving

your flexibility or working on movement technique, whatever

is going to stop you from getting hurt.

Or maybe we progress slower so we don't get there.

That will allow us to do the work necessary to hit

that goal 12 months from now, not two weeks from now,

not two months from now.

Maybe that's not the case.

Maybe you're like, no, look, hey, I move well.

I feel like I'm in decent shape.

I've got enough muscle mass on me.

We've talked in previous episodes

why having insufficient muscle mass

is sometimes detrimental for fat loss.

So you checked all that boxes.

I don't get hurt very often.

I got equipment around, no problem.

I've got the time in my schedule.

And I have enough muscle.

Great.

Well, now we maybe just split it up and say,

look, we got 12 months.

We got 2%.

It's as simple as doing half a percent per quarter

of the year.

And now all we're looking at is that number.

I don't have to necessarily get all these things done.

I can go a quarter, half percent, half percent,

half percent, half percent.

You're going to get there.

The other scenario that I laid out a second ago,

it maybe needs to look like something like this.

Quarter one is going to be 0%.

Well, yeah, that's right, you may not

lose a pound for the next three months.

We don't care.

That's not the goal of these treatments.

I know that's the goal this year.

That's our major macro cycle goal.

We're going to get there.

But to get there most effectively,

we need to invest in working more with your chiropractor

or whatever the thing is.

That will allow us to then go half a percent

quarter two, when we can really start training.

But we're going to ramp into it.

Quarter three we're going to go another half a percent.

And now we're halfway there.

Quarter four, we've invested so much you're ready to go.

We're going to go hard.

We're going to get that last 1%, that last quarter.

And we're going to get there.

And you won't be hurt.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: So that makes it very clear.

And I can also envision how the precise structure

of these intermediate goals would

vary depending on what sort of adaptation one is pursuing.

And I do remember from our previous episodes

that fat loss itself is not an adaptation.

It is a byproduct of other adaptations.

So I just want to make sure that you know

that I was paying attention.

It's committed to memory.

ANDY GALPIN: Absolutely.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Some goals, such as fat loss,

are very quantifiable.

And yet, they might not be linear.

It's hard to know--

the assumption is if you ingest x fewer calories than

are required per day, then you'll lose x amount of weight,

some percentage from body fat.

I think that cues up the idea that we

need to build some flexibility into our thinking

about these intermediate goals in order to just make sure

that dopamine system isn't tethered to exact numbers

because after all a reduction in 2% body fat,

for instance, is really a desire to achieve

a different sort of overall body composition or recomposition.

I don't know, by the way, that that's my exact goal.

I think one of my goals is to be able to run a mile faster.

And I'm sort of haunted by this experience

of wanting to run cross-country in college

and trying to walk on.

We weren't a Division I school.

But the threshold for being considered for the team

was you had to run a sub 10-minute 2 mile, which turns

out to be very, very fast.

ANDY GALPIN: That's really hard.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I did not do that.

I didn't even come close.

And I don't think that I could reasonably do that now.

I'm not interested in committing to the kind of training

required.

The sacrifice isn't meaningful enough for me.

ANDY GALPIN: Fair and honest.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: But lowering one's time

to run a mile by, I don't know, 10%

seems like a reasonable goal across six months.

ANDY GALPIN: Sure.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Great.

So in the case of a goal like that, clearly

there are specific training programs.

But this raises the issue of, what

if I have other goals as well?

And at what point do people having

multiple goals start to set up collisions between goals?

How do we know whether or not something is reasonable

not just on its own but because of the other things that one

has structured into their program.

So being able to reduce a mile time by 10% in six months,

OK, maybe that's doable.

Maybe it's not.

You can tell me.

But also being able to double the amount that they

can do for single repetition leg extension for that matter,

at the same time those seem like incompatible goals.

ANDY GALPIN: So a couple of things.

Number one, the more specific and precise

you can be with a single goal, the faster

you will get there, generally.

So in theory, if you had one thing you wanted to achieve,

the best way to go about it is to focus on that.

Give it the most priority.

That doesn't mean you can't do anything else along the way.

You can.

But you would want to focus on that.

The more additional goals you bring in,

the more distraction you're creating for that primary goal.

Depending on what those goals are,

you can actually do them at the same time.

Some other combinations are less effective.

Think about it like this.

We went through those nine adaptations.

And we went through them in a specific order on purpose.

The closer those adaptations are together in that list,

the more compatible they are to training each other.

The further away, they become more challenging.

So just to give a few examples.

If you wanted to improve your speed in power,

you could basically train those simultaneously.

They would not interfere with each other at all.

And, in fact, since power is speed times force,

it would be complementary.

If you just walk down the line from there

to strength, hey, same thing.

If you get faster, that's going to aid in strength

because force is mass times acceleration.

So if you improve acceleration, you're

contributing to strength.

Same thing with power.

So speed, power, and strength are generally

very complementary.

You can absolutely train all three of those goals

at the same time and have no issues.

Getting into hypertrophy, now we've

got a little bit of distinction.

If you're going to train strength and hypertrophy, as we

talked about in that episode, at the base

those are going to be complementary.

You add on some muscle.

You're going to get stronger.

You start training for strength.

It's probably going to help you out on some muscle mass.

As you get to the end of that spectrum,

the overlap between the two starts

to go away, such that if you truly

wanted to maximize strength above everything else,

if you continue to train for hypertrophy as well,

that's going to take too many resources out

of your recovery bin.

And you won't be able to do that.

The inverse would also be the same.

If you're training to maximize strength,

you wouldn't be able to put enough volume on

to get sufficient hypertrophy.

So if you wanted to then combine speed with hypertrophy,

you're going farther away from each other,

which means it's going to be more and more distraction.

So the hypertrophy training would cause a ton of fatigue.

You wouldn't be able to go at max speed for your speed

or power strength.

So you're going to be compromising those results.

Now, speed training won't compromise

your hypertrophy training because it's non fatiguing.

And so, boom, here we have a little bit

of an interference effect one way but probably not the other.

Let's move down the spectrum one more time

and get into endurance.

We won't go through all of these things.

But you're getting the idea here.

Oh, a little bit of high intensity intervals?

OK, cool.

Now, would that compromise my speed, power, or strength?

Probably because there's a little bit of residual fatigue.

If the volume was low enough, then you'd be fine.

All you're worried about there is not necessarily

like some sort of cellular mechanism.

It's just simple fatigue.

It is amount of energy expenditure

versus is that compromising my recovery to come back.

Would those first three or four of those-- speed,

power, strength-- interfere with your ability

to elevate your anaerobic capacity?

Probably not.

Almost surely, in fact, if you look

at any of the literature on endurance training,

you will see that speed, power, and strength almost always

improve endurance.

Endurance training added on top of strength can be detrimental,

can have a neutral effect, but generally

doesn't help one get stronger by adding additional conditioning

unless you're so unfit you can't get through the volume needed

in the strength training.

One more example here so we don't drag this out too far.

In the case of something like I want to lose fat, well, hey,

we don't have to worry about interference.

It doesn't really matter.

If you're fatigued for your hypertrophy session,

not a big deal.

We're just trying to get some work done.

If your hypertrophy session fatigued you

from your conditioning, it's cool

because you got the work done.

So you don't have to worry about it so much.

So it really kind of depends on the actual goal.

And what you want to pay attention to

is, actually, what are the chances of overlap, which

means like what are the adaptations you

get physiologically that cross over from one to the other?

And then what are the ones that are actually

going to start interfering?

In fact, in my class, I have this giant matrix chart

of interference effect going from adaptations

through a whole bunch of systems, everything

from handling pH to lymphatic drainage

to bone marrow density, et cetera.

You can walk through these whole things

and see which ones actually have a positive effect, which ones

have a massive positive effect, and then

which ones actually have a little bit of an interference.

And perhaps if you guys are nice enough,

we could throw that into a newsletter or something,

some PDF or something.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I think that would be immensely valuable.

I think some of that more extensive information,

when it's laid out in grid form like that is really useful.

So we should-- well, now we've said it.

So we--

ANDY GALPIN: I didn't say I would do it.

I said perhaps.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I think it's a great idea.

I think it's a terrific idea.

The idea that items closer to each other

on the list of those nine different adaptations

are going to be easier to achieve in parallel than items

further apart makes perfect sense.

And what I heard was that there's a few caveats that

might seem minor.

But they're actually quite important,

such as anything that is relatively low intensity

and doesn't impede recovery can probably

be included as a parallel goal.

So some speed work in conjunction

with some long duration cardio work, versus even though we're

talking about number 2 on that list and number 9 on that list.

ANDY GALPIN: In that case, the long duration

endurance, even if it's low intensity,

may actually interfere with the speed

if the volume gets too high.

If you're talking about, I went on a 30 minute jog,

for most people, it's totally fine.

What we're really talking about here

is when the miles start piling up.

And the time really starts getting there in combination

with some of the things-- the factors

we've talked about earlier, which is exercise choice.

So more eccentric landing based exercise choices.

Running, for example, is more likely to interfere

than cycling because you're not landing.

Swimming is low impact.

So if you're going to do those things,

you can hedge your bets a little bit by choosing an exercise

choice that is less impactful.

Again, if we're literally-- because there's oftentimes

confusing here is like, oh, don't do 10 minutes

on the treadmill before you lift.

You're going to cut--

oh, time out.

Warm up is fine.

We're really talking about probably more than 30

plus minutes at higher than 60% heart rate--

random number, something like that,

depends on the person, et cetera.

But it has to be a decent chunk.

Again, you can actually fix that by then just consuming

calories.

You can also fix that by making sure everything

else in the hidden and visible stressor bucket is improved.

So that's just like one of our tricks

that we'll get into when we get to the recovery,

is you don't necessarily need to reduce your training if you

just ramp up your recovery.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I'd like to take a brief break

and acknowledge our sponsor Athletic Greens.

Athletic Greens is a vitamin mineral probiotic and adaptogen

drink designed to help you meet all

of your foundational nutritional needs.

I've been taking Athletic Greens daily since 2012.

So I'm delighted that they're a sponsor of this podcast.

The reason I started taking Athletic Greens and the reason

I still take Athletic Greens once or twice a day

is that it helps me meet all of my foundational nutritional

needs.

That is, it covers my vitamins, my minerals.

And the probiotics are especially important to me.

Athletic Greens also contains adaptogens,

which are critical for recovering from stress,

from exercise, from work, or just general life.

If you'd like to try Athletic Greens,

you can go to athleticgreens.com/huberman

to claim a special offer.

They'll give you five free travel packs.

And they'll give you a year supply of vitamin D3 K2.

Again, if you'd like to try Athletic Greens,

go to athleticgreens.com/huberman

to claim the special offer.

I'm going to take the liberty of assuming that most people fall

into one of either three bins in terms of their goals,

again, most people.

Certainly, there are going to be people

that lie outside these bins.

I think if you polled 100 people or 100,000 or 1 million people

as to what their major goals were in working out,

they'd say, as you so nicely listed out before,

aesthetic changes, functionality, and longevity.

But that one in three really kind of sit higher

than most people would like to perhaps even admit.

They want to look good, which usually means

they want to lose some fat, gain some muscle in specific places.

I realize there are folks out there

who want to gain a lot of muscle and just muscle everywhere.

But I think most people would like

to have a little more shape here, a little more

muscle there to either balance out their aesthetic

or to accentuate certain parts of their physique.

And they would probably like to shave off

some subcutaneous fat, although there are those exceptionally

lean people out there.

And they exist too.

I think it would be gain muscle in specific places,

lose fat, and do it in a way that

also provides some boost to their health span

and longevity.

I would say that that might even be 50% of people out there.

Again, I'm taking the liberty of guesstimating.

Another bin I would venture is interested in getting stronger

and putting on more muscle.

Certainly, there are a number of people that

are interested in doing that.

And that could even be more muscle

all over or more muscle with some accentuation

to certain areas where they happen

to be weaker or less developed, as it were.

And then the third bin would be people that really

enjoy cardiovascular work.

Oh, I should say the second bin probably care

about their longevity also.

But it's not really foremost, like, yeah, I feel great now,

and I'll live to be whatever.

But I only want to do it if I get that much muscle.

We know these kinds of folks.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah, I run a poll in my class every year

when I ask, what, you guys all lift?

And, of course, I make them put their hand up,

like, you guys are in my class, you're

going to put your hand up, let you lift weights.

And then I ask, why do you train?

And long term health is like on the list.

And they all--

I'm like any of you that selected health are liars.

You're 20 to 25.

You are not exercising for health.

You are exercising because you want to look a certain way

or get stronger.

Once you get past that undergraduate age,

though, the actual desire to live longer and better actually

becomes pretty real.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah, I think that there are

people who want to feel better.

They know that exercise and the results from exercise

can make them feel better.

But, yeah, that second bin tends to be more focused

on the aesthetic changes, it seems, or being strong.

And then the third category, I think, are people--

I know a lot of folks like this, who

really enjoy what are normally considered endurance type

activities.

And here I just want to highlight again

what you so beautifully illustrated

in previous episodes, that you can gain a lot of endurance

even using weights or machines.

It just depends on how you use them.

It's not about the exercise.

It's about how you perform them and et cetera.

And you, again, beautifully provided all those details

as how to create endurance regardless of equipment

standards, et cetera.

But that third category seem to be

people who enjoy running, cycling, swimming, hiking,

dancing, activities that they can

do for long periods of time.

That often will involve some sort

of skill that is based on improving motor patterns,

maybe not so much stride but certainly

for people that really love tennis, people

that love a sport, like golf.

They want to be able to not just walk.

They want to walk the 18 holes.

They want to have a great golf swing, et cetera.

I'm not a golf player.

So forgive me if my nomenclature is off.

So there are three--

ANDY GALPIN: Golfer.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah, golfers.

ANDY GALPIN: You don't play golf.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Oh, got it.

You don't play golf.

ANDY GALPIN: Well, you play golf.

You wouldn't call a golf player.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I played miniature golf a few times.

And that's about it, although Stanford

does have a beautiful golf course, I'm told.

I should learn how to play golf.

ANDY GALPIN: I'll come up and play it for you if you want.

You come up.

I'll play it.

I'll tell you how it goes.

Get me on that course.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I can almost see it from my lap.

So category one, I think, is a significant fraction of people.

So as we lay out these different ways to assess goals

and as we approach the structure of a program,

as you'll tell us-- if we could perhaps touch back to those

every once in a while.

Again, I'm taking the liberty of assuming

that we will net about 80% to 90% of people out there, again,

those categories being people who want to lose some fat,

maybe build some muscle in specific areas on their body,

and really want to be healthy.

They want to feel great.

And they want to have a long health span and lifespan.

They want to live a long time feeling great.

Second category, people want to build more muscle and strength.

Sure, they don't want to damage their health.

But that's not their main focus.

Their main focus is on building muscle and strength.

And then that third category of people

who really want to do more endurance type work, feel

great and strong doing it but not

because they can carry heavy weights while they're doing it.

But rather, they can feel vital and they

can push harder for longer and maybe even translate that

to some of the more recreational type activities or sports,

like tennis, and things that are more long duration,

playing soccer or maybe even softball

or things of that sort.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah, surfing, swimming.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: So those three categories-- maybe we

could call those bin A, B, and C for sake of today's discussion.

I think if you're willing to embrace--

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah, I love it.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: --I think that will be informative toward

our listeners in a way that--

simply not assuming what people's different goals are

might not be able to accomplish.

Said differently, hopefully, by doing that,

people will derive a lot more from the description

of the program that you're going to give us.

ANDY GALPIN: Love it.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Now, I am certain that I

want to let you return to your list of the five things

that people need to consider when establishing a exercise

program.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah, great, let's do that.

I also do want to acknowledge a point you've brought up.

Exercise doesn't mean just lifting weights.

That's my background.

That's what I spend my time on.

So I sort of default to examples in that category.

But it doesn't have to be that.

You've articulated plenty of other ways

where you can get amazing forms of exercise that have nothing

to do with lifting weights.

So for those folks in--

was it bin C or 3?

I can't remember it.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Bin C. We go A is, again, muscle,

lose fat, be healthy now and forever.

Bin B is get stronger, gain muscle,

don't damage your health, but not really focus on health

in the immediate term.

And then bin C is want to play or do endurance type activities

and, quote unquote, "feel strong doing it,"

so have more vigor to be able to do that longer

and maybe with more attention to skill, et cetera,

and, of course, also want to improve their health.

ANDY GALPIN: Well, what you've effectively done

is you've given us three different avatars with three

different goals.

So the next step for each person or group

is going to be to identify their defenders.

But before we get that, we've got

to close the loop on this SMART thing.

So in each case, they have either

chosen that goal based on their personal preference.

Or perhaps they did our fitness testing protocol

and realized they need to gain strength.

So whether the reason they chose to be in buckets B or A

or C was because of our protocol or just personal preference.

It really doesn't matter.

They still want to go through this process of laying out

their goals and making sure, again, they are specific.

So let's go through bin C, which is a great one.

So you want to have more energy.

And you want to feel stronger when

you're doing your kiteboarding.

You want to feel stronger when you

finish your round of tennis, round of golf, game of tennis.

OK, great.

That's a different strength.

Absolutely see, I hear, I know what you're saying though.

Amazing.

So that goal needs to be specific to that.

So it would be hard to make a goal like, I want to feel

better at the end of my round.

Boy, that depends on too many other factors.

A better goal would be something like this.

I want to be able to run this 2-mile loop that I

do around my neighborhood.

And I want to do it and have a lower heart rate at the end.

Or I want to be able to get my heart rate

recovery back faster.

Amazing, that will probably align with you feeling,

quote unquote, "stronger" with it.

So I did the same course.

And either I could do it at the same speed

and it's not nearly as hard or I can go faster, whichever one.

It doesn't matter.

But that would be an example of a specific goal.

The other buckets you laid out kind of already

have specific goals, like I want to get stronger.

Well, that's going to be the goal.

The other one is going to be, I want to lose some fat.

The goal is sort of implicit in that.

It's the other people where you're just like,

I don't really care about that.

I just want to be able to surf the great waves

and then not feel exhausted afterwards.

All right, cool.

Well, then you still should pick a metric

that is not that activity maybe because it won't

be within your control, depending

on the waves and the temperature and all that stuff,

that you can use as a proxy to say, if I were to do something

that represented me feeling probably better when I surf,

what would that be?

And it's not perfect.

But it would be still as specific as you could get.

You still want to make sure it's measurable.

Again, this example might be something

like you're going to go to the pool and time

how long it takes you to swim 800 meters or something.

It's attainable.

And then you'll set a goal that's realistic and timely.

I'm going to improve by 5% in the next two months.

OK, cool, that probably falls in the realm.

And then you're making the assumption

that if you did that, you'll probably

feel better when you go out to do your primary activity, which

is, say, surf.

The reality of it is every time we

work with an actual athlete, that's what we do.

Athletes don't come to us to lift weights.

They don't come to us to get stronger.

They come to us because they want to play better.

And they want to stay on the field more.

What we're trying to convince them of

is if you do this thing in the gym, then

that should translate into you being better at your sport,

recovering faster, being less injured.

But it's still just a proxy.

And so that's all you're doing with these other non-specific

goals, especially when they're performance based goals.

And we didn't package it that way.

But that's really what you talked about for bin C there.

It is a performance based goal.

I want to be able to perform when I'm in the field.

In my brain, that's a sport.

In your brain, it's when you're at yoga class.

It's the same thing.

We've said this earlier in our series that if you have a body,

you're an athlete.

I want to prepare your body so that it can do

exactly what you want it to do.

You then get to have the choice of what you ask it to do.

You call it a sport.

You call it your Saturday hike with your family.

I don't really care.

It's the same thing.

You get control of your body performing

the way you want it to perform.

And that's what this whole thing is about.

Great.

So now that we've covered, I think,

as much as we need to regarding assessing and choosing a goal,

I want to get back to this idea of identifying your defender.

So you really need to think carefully

about what is stopping you from hitting those goals.

And so you're forecasting a little bit.

You're also going back into your own personal history.

Do you have history of knee pain?

Do you have a history of working too much?

Do you have a history of a lot of travel?

Do you have a history of getting sick a lot?

What are these things that are happening

that are going to stop you from hitting your goal?

A couple of examples I've already

laid out so we don't need to go too much longer here.

But in the case of somebody who is in maybe bin A, which

is I want to lose some fat, maybe

gain a little bit of muscle, OK, what's

stopping you from the strength and conditioning side?

Is it the fact that you can't train consistent enough?

Is it the fact that when you go to train,

you don't know what to do?

Is it the fact that when you go to train,

you train your ass off and you're not getting results.

OK, great.

All three of these different scenarios

are going to result in different programs

because they have different reasons you're failing.

And that is really critical.

Instead of just going I want a fat loss program

and picking one up off the internet,

it may not actually be addressing

the point of failure for you.

So the sooner you can choose your programs

based on why you're failing, the sooner

you'll start getting results.

You have to run a little bit of a critical analysis there.

And it can be something scientific.

And it could be a measurement.

And it also could just be thinking

about you've tried this in the past and why didn't it work.

It wasn't that interesting.

OK, tell me more about why it wasn't interesting.

I'm not really into machines.

And that's all I had.

OK, great.

Or I loved it.

I loved the gym I was at.

And I was getting results.

But it was so far away.

OK, interesting.

Why did you stop before?

Why didn't it work?

Or if it did work in the past, amazing.

Let's go back to something similar.

But has your life changed at all?

Is there anything different about now than when

it worked three years ago?

Yes, no.

If not, maybe we run it right back.

If it is, OK, we're going to predict those things.

And you want to work--

effectively, what I'm saying is throughout this entire 10-step

process is going to be you want to make sure

that there are the non-negotiables that

are in your life that you know are going to be ahead

of your fitness program.

And you want to work with those things, not against them

because life will win.

When it comes to your children, when it comes to your job,

life is going to win.

You're going to have to give up something.

It's going to take some hard work.

But we want to fight the right battles for most people.

Even for our professional athletes,

we get this all the time.

It's just like they have nothing else to do but train.

Like, whoa, whoa, hold on now, they're getting traded.

They have agents to deal with.

They may not have a contract.

They have families, blah, blah, blah.

Life will get in the way, I promise.

And so you want to fight the battles that you can win,

not ones that you're going to lose.

And so that's really what this game is about.

So if the battle is, hey, my job is super hectic, OK, great.

We're going to come up with a different strategy that's

more flexible maybe.

I'm still going to hold you to the fire.

I'm not going to be easier on you.

But we're just not going to try to set up a situation where you

have to do this workout Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday

because you know your job is on the road.

And you're to provide all income for your family, whatever

the thing is.

That's what we really want to identify.

So when I say identify your defenders,

you need to run a little bit of a critical analysis on this.

And a little bit of a tool I'll use for this

is a modification of another system

I stole from Kenny Cain, which is what

we call the quadrant system.

So you can imagine everything in your life

goes into one of four buckets.

Now, bucket 1 I'm just going to call business.

And this is anything to do with your job, income,

sort of all those things.

Bucket 2 is relationships.

So, again, this could be family or love life, anything

that we would call relationships--

social connection, purpose, anything, right?

Bucket 3 is your fitness.

And bucket 4 is your recovery.

So one of the first steps we take is we walk through this.

And we say, all right, you have 10 points total.

And you get to distribute these 10 points across the four

areas.

So not 10 each, you get 10 total.

And so we walk through.

And we say, right now, where are you giving your points?

And we could do this right now for you if you'd like.

Or I could make up a scenario.

You want to do it?

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Sure.

ANDY GALPIN: Great.

So, Andrew, right now in the last month,

if you had 10 points total in those four categories,

where would you be distributing the most points?

Which category?

And how many points would that be?

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Business, my work.

ANDY GALPIN: Business, work job, sort of all those things.

And how many out of 10?

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Which doesn't, I

should say, ever quite feel like work.

Running a laboratory and doing the podcast

doesn't ever really feel like work in the traditional sense.

But it's career.

It's work.

It involves relationships.

But it certainly doesn't enhance my fitness

except of my vocal chords and recovery.

So with those notes there, I would say 4 to 5.

ANDY GALPIN: You pick.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: 5.

ANDY GALPIN: 5, fair.

That's the most common number, business 5.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Great.

Once again, I'm typical, which makes me happy.

ANDY GALPIN: You nailed it.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: One of the few ways

in which I've been accused of being normal.

I pick 5 for business.

ANDY GALPIN: No kidding.

What's the next highest?

And what's that score?

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I do invest in relationships.

I would say does it have to be around--

can it be--

ANDY GALPIN: It has to be a whole integer.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: A whole integer.

2.

ANDY GALPIN: 2, all right, we're 7 out of 10 here.

So would you say it is fair that you

spend roughly 2 and 1/2 percent of your-- it's not necessarily

time.

It's energy, time, focus, and sort of all of these things--

2 and 1/2 times as much on your business as you

do in your relationships?

ANDREW HUBERMAN: It varies, depending on what's going on.

It feels a little skewed in the direction of business.

So I might want to adjust to a 4 to 3 ratio there.

ANDY GALPIN: Maybe not.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: But I think I'm going to hold to 5, 2,

business, relationships.

And then, just for sake of example

and because this doesn't seem like an exceedingly precise

measure, it can have some slop.

ANDY GALPIN: Of course.

Where would you put fitness and recovery?

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I definitely put energy into fitness.

So I'm going to give that also a 2.

ANDY GALPIN: Yep, which leaves?

ANDREW HUBERMAN: 1 for recovery.

ANDY GALPIN: Great.

That what you just laid out is, again,

the most quintessential split you could have.

In fact, you run this game on everyone,

they're going to come up with basically the same answer

unless they don't work out or whatever.

So a couple of rules here.

Recovery must be at minimum half of your fitness allocation.

In your case, 2 to 1.

You're fine.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I think I'm going to say it has to be half.

It has to be 5 out of 10 points.

ANDY GALPIN: No.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: In which case, it doesn't leave much

for anything else.

ANDY GALPIN: I would like it to be minimum 20%

of the total, which means 2 out of 10.

Now, when I say recovery, I don't simply mean muscle.

I mean you need personal time.

You need meditation.

You need--

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Sleep.

ANDY GALPIN: --sleep.

You need to go to a concert and get out and see people.

And so like whatever the things that give you energy back.

Some folks, that's personal time.

Some folks, that's social time, whatever

that means to you, right?

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah, I actually get a lot of energy

from my work.

And so that's why some of these numbers are a little bit--

you can kind of cloak the underlying dynamics.

ANDY GALPIN: So here's what we do from this game.

We look at that and we say, if that's our split, Andrew, 5, 3,

2, 1--

ANDREW HUBERMAN: 5, 2, 2, 1.

ANDY GALPIN: 5, 2, 2, 1.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I'd love to be able to put 3

in relationships just because.

But then they need 11 out of--

ANDY GALPIN: Right.

So here's the fun game we play.

You're currently at this.

And you don't get to add to 11.

You have to stay at 10.

Your 10 is different than my 10 maybe, right?

But 10 is 10, or just-- whatever the maximum

you can actually do.

It's you.

So if we went back to our training goal, whatever

that goal was for you, and we went back to our defenders,

we would look at this score now and say, is 3 out of 10--

fitness is 3, right?

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Fitness is 2.

So it's 5, 2, 2, 1.

ANDY GALPIN: Is 2 out of 10 sufficient to hit that training

goal in that time frame you described?

And let's say you said, I want to hit a new PR in my mile

six months from now.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah, for simplicity's sake

and also because it's largely true,

I'm going to put myself in what I refer to as bin A earlier.

My body fat percentage is OK.

It's in the range that I would like.

But I would like to bring it down a little bit,

probably gain a little bit muscle here and there,

keep or gain some endurance.

And, certainly, certainly, my immediate and long term health

are extremely important to me.

ANDY GALPIN: Great.

So then the question, and the answer

maybe yes, that this is the optimal split for you.

If it is not, then we have to make a choice.

We either alter the goal or the timeline to make it realistic

or we alter our quadrant.

And then if we're going to alter our quadrant,

the next step is critically important.

We need a list of very specific life actions

that we're going to take that allows that split to happen.

So if you said, for example, I want to put three

into relationships, great.

What specific life actions are you

going to take to pull one from fitness--

you can't pull any from recovery or one from business.

And you don't have to actually answer.

This is--

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Too personal.

ANDY GALPIN: I know you don't like making these things

about you because--

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Right, that's the other reason to do it.

And it is a diabolical trick to insist

that these be whole integers because I

would have done like a 4.5 for business and a 2.5

for relationships.

But, obviously, you write the rules on this, not me.

ANDY GALPIN: So you would just walk that list.

And the list could be something like I promise to not

work after 7:00 PM Thursday through Sunday

or whatever the thing is.

I promise I'm going to make sure that I don't start work

before 8:00 AM or blah, blah, blah, whatever.

No more trips.

Just make those things specific and measurable,

not just like I'm going to work less.

That's never going to go-- what is the very specific life

action you're going to take?

There's going to be alarm that goes off Tuesday

night at 4:00, 5:00 PM.

And no matter what we--

at Barbell Shrugged, we used to have a little shirt that

was like D3AT, which is like drop everything

and train, which means at 3:00 PM in the afternoon,

no matter what's happening, we dropped everything

and trained because that was like when you start a business

and you're going, things just run away from you.

And it is just sort of like, man, it's not my company.

But those guys are like, we are a strength and conditioning

company.

And we're not training.

So we had to just make this hard rule.

And it was just like a little thing that came up.

And it was easy to say drop everything and train 3:00.

There you go.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I like this drop D, E everything, A

and, blank, like it could be drop everything and--

ANDY GALPIN: Correct.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: --pick your favorite.

ANDY GALPIN: Totally.

Drop everything and read.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Pick the relevant-- read, yeah,

absolutely.

I really miss reading for pleasure.

I would put that under recovery and--

ANDY GALPIN: Drop everything and breathe.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Oh, and breathe you are saying.

Oh, and breathe.

I was saying read.

ANDY GALPIN: I said that too.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah, because for me, reading is actually

is both recovery and relationship.

Because oftentimes in my relationships,

I've insisted-- not insisted.

I certainly didn't insist.

We've had a format of reading the same book in parallel.

ANDY GALPIN: Oh, great.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah, not necessarily side by side

but the same book in parallel and then discussing it.

It's a wonderful practice or listening

to the same audio book.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah, it works well.

You can do drop everything and play.

You're just going to go do something.

You're going to play video games.

You're going to go play with your kid.

You're going to-- do you want to play with your dog?

It doesn't even have to actually be play.

But play to you could signify personal time.

It doesn't really matter.

So, yeah, that's it.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I really like this drop everything

and blank category that you probably

shouldn't have more than what?

Two or three of those overall?

ANDY GALPIN: Pretty much one to two maybe

is where you want to go after that.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: So the idea is then

to redistribute the numbers on this list

but through a very concrete action.

And I like this drop everything and blank

because it speaks to the non-negotiable aspect of it.

ANDY GALPIN: Has to be.

Life will get pushed.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: It's not a fine time to--

it's not in next year I'm going to--

ANDY GALPIN: Correct.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I love it.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah, yeah.

When you put those things--

those things, you might as well just don't even

put it on your list right.

It's not going to happen.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah, you're talking

to somebody who loves rules.

Because when they are non-negotiable rules,

they provide this incredible organizing force for the brain.

It's really a neuroscience thing in my mind.

ANDY GALPIN: Totally.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: And, actually, we did an episode on happiness

where you find that once people make a decision, if they

eliminate the possibility of other decisions, like,

literally, the hatch is closed, that is it--

ANDY GALPIN: Burn the boats.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: --the rates of subjective happiness,

immediate and long term happiness,

over time go way, way up.

And so I'm convinced that the nervous system

doesn't like to keep the valves on these dopamine circuits

open.

I actually think it diminishes from the reward component.

And there are actually some data on this.

Anyway, I don't want to take us off track.

ANDY GALPIN: The last part of this,

what we do then is we take that quadrant.

And we take that list.

And then you're going to print it physically.

And you're going to put it in two places.

This could actually be on your phone.

You don't have to print it.

You can screenshot and be the background of your phone.

So every time you click on your phone,

you immediately see that quadrant.

It's a very clear reminder of like,

what are my priorities today?

Just a simple little picture.

I also like to put it in your place of failure.

So for a lot of people, that is like on their laptop or right

above their workstation.

It's the thing that's going to lose and beat

your fitness is your job--

typically.

Or it's on your TV, it's on your Netflix control--

no, sorry, Netflix, no offense.

But you know what I mean?

It's whatever the thing is that you fail for.

I play too many video games.

Great.

I work too much.

OK, great.

And you put it there.

And you put it also--

the last component is-- it has to also

be in the hands of somebody who can hold you accountable.

Wife, training partner, business partner, whatever.

So it's like, hey, Andrew, you promised you

were going to do x yourself.

Why are you still here?

You committed to this.

You've got to get out of here.

Someone who will be like, no, no.

It's drop everything and read.

It's 8:00.

You're supposed to be reading.

You got to go.

You're going to check back in on that.

Check back again every week.

Check back in-- it doesn't matter, every month.

And then, you can adjust.

That's fine.

You can always change the system.

But that has to now change.

You've got to print a new one.

And now it's a whole new promise you've made to yourself.

So you've got to be able to hold yourself

accountable to those things.

It's got to be flexible enough to where it's realistic.

It can't be, I'm not going to work after 6:00 every day.

Maybe it's just three days a week.

Maybe it's, on Saturdays I promise

to work for the first two hours so I don't work Saturday night.

Or whatever, or the inverse, I'm not going to work Saturday--

you get it.

You could come up with a million examples here.

So that's the system we use to make sure

that we have now properly identified where we're going.

We found a roadmap to that.

And now we know exactly how we're going to stay on track.

I have to take this opportunity to add one more thing

to our drop everything list.

And you gave the example of DEAR,

which is maybe drop everything and read,

or drop everything and relax.

Or another example, I have to add a DEAL,

which is drop everything and-- this is for you, Lex--

love.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Actually, one of the advantages

of having a dog or having children

is that the drop everything and love is often

enforced by the faces of those that you love.

They just show up in whatever space you happen to be in.

ANDY GALPIN: Especially if you work from home.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I'd like to take

a brief break to acknowledge our sponsor, Inside Tracker.

Inside Tracker is a personalized nutrition platform

that analyzes data from your blood and DNA

to help you better understand your body

and help you reach your health goals.

I've long been a believer in getting regular blood work done

for the simple reason that many of the factors that impact

your immediate and long-term health and well-being

can only be analyzed from a quality blood test.

One issue with a lot of blood tests and DNA tests out there,

however, is that you get information back

about various levels of lipids, and hormones,

and metabolic factors, et cetera.

But you don't know what to do with that information.

InsideTracker makes knowing what to do with all that information

exceedingly easy.

They have a personalized platform that lets you see what

your specific numbers are, of course, but then also,

what sorts of behavioral do's and don'ts, what sorts

of nutritional changes, what sorts of supplementation would

allow you to bring those levels into the ranges that are

optimal for you.

If you'd like to try InsideTracker,

you can visit InsideTracker.com/Huberman

to get 20% off any of InsideTracker's plans.

Again, that's InsideTracker.com/Huberman

to get 20% off.

ANDY GALPIN: Let's move on to the next one, shall we?

Number three here is going to be what I call calendar or time

frame.

So it's going back a little bit and saying,

you've decided on this goal and you've

identified the defenders.

Now we need to come up with a realistic time

frame for how long it's going to take to accomplish that goal.

And when you do that, you need to look at your life schedule.

And what I mean by that is do you have

important deadlines coming up?

Do you have a holiday?

Do you have a trip?

Do you have travel?

Do your children have something coming up?

You need to take all that information.

And I literally lay out a calendar.

And I write all those dates in a physical calendar first.

And the reason I'm suggesting this is you

want to work your training backwards around that.

As we've been discussing, life will win.

If you try to plan a training program that

is five days a week 90 minutes a day, and all of a sudden,

you look two weeks from now and you realize

you've got a grant deadline.

And then you've got to take two days to go to Austin.

It's just foolish.

You're going to fail.

And then you're going to quit.

And you're going to be like, man, again,

my training program failed.

So you need to figure out what are

the non-negotiables are in that business quadrant,

and just not be foolish.

So let's imagine you're going to plot out, say,

a 12-week training phase.

And you want to-- you've decided on this goal.

And then you look and you realize

in the middle of this 12-week span,

week five is really hectic and chaotic.

Or you realize that this is a quarter in which something

important is due.

Maybe we want to either adjust the goal.

Or what we really do in this step is going on

to actually step number four, which

is choose the number of days per week you can exercise

and the length in terms of amount of time

you can truly afford to train.

I would rather you underestimate that than overestimate it.

So you, again, you look at the calendar.

You put all these non-negotiables,

the deadlines you cannot move in the calendar.

And then you say, look, based on this, realistically,

I can conservatively train three days a week

for 60 minutes total.

And that includes the time I walk

into the gym, my warm-up, my down-regulation breathing

at the end, and then me getting back

either in the shower and back.

Because really, now it's maybe 90 minutes

by the time you traveled, you transitioned,

you picked back up on work, you showered, you ate, et cetera.

That time just runs away from you.

And all of sudden it was a two and 1/2 hour thing

even though it was a 45-minute workout.

So you really need to figure that thing out.

If you're a few weeks in and you realize, ooh,

I actually have a little more time than I thought,

you can always train more.

You can do another thing.

You can add up.

But what you don't want to do is set up

a program that is requiring you to do certain exercises on one

days or certain styles of training on another,

and then you constantly miss one of those days.

I thought I could do four days a week,

but one day a week something's getting pulled out.

That's just going to keep you off schedule.

It's going to make you feel like a failure.

And you're going to run into problems with your training.

So schedule three if you're sure you can get three.

And if there's an extra day, we can always do other fun stuff.

So that's really step three and four.

Figure out your life events over the course of this time.

How many days a week can you train?

And then how long in terms of minutes per workout.

Notice, we haven't selected a single exercise yet.

We haven't worried about how heavy,

rest intervals, all those modifiable variables.

You don't need to pick those later.

First, where are we going.

Second, how are we going to get there, which is the quadrant

and identifying of defenders.

And then the third is, what are the restrictions

I need to place on myself in terms of program design

based on how often and how long I can work out.

That is going to allow you to go back

to some of the previous episodes and go, man,

you gave us all kinds of ideas.

How do I know which one to choose?

This is your answer.

You're going to choose based upon the limitations of time

and frequency.

So if you've already said, we're in-- let's imagine

we're in bucket A, or bucket C. It doesn't matter.

And you go, look, the most I can afford

with where I'm at with what's going on in my life

is three days a week.

Well, we automatically know we're

going to have to start training-- choosing a training

style that's limited to three days a week.

Don't even worry about the four or five day stuff.

Those are off the table.

And now we're on-- so we've placed restrictions.

It goes back to that concept of I

think it's one of your podcast's guests, Jocko.

It's just like, hey, structure gives us actually some freedom.

So by creating some restrictions here,

we're a little more free to go, I only actually

have to choose between A and B.

Rather than sitting down and going, man, there's all--

I'm 20 hours into this exercise podcast thing.

And there's so many options.

Which one to pick?

Well, you create a little bit of restriction.

And now it's easier to go, oh, my only option is A or B.

And there we go.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: So that's number four.

ANDY GALPIN: That's three and four.

At that point, once we're good there,

now what you want to do us go to step number five, which

is actually select your exercises or your movements.

And this can be as simple as selecting a kettlebell swing,

or running, or swimming.

It could be your entire exercise mode.

What you want to do with exercise selection

here is make sure that you're balancing those exercises

across the whole week.

Not within necessarily every workout.

So if you have four days a week, five days a week,

you want to look at the exercise selection

and say, OK, I need to have somewhat

of a reasonable balance between movement patterns, or muscle

groups, or front and back, side to side,

however you're thinking of it, just across that week.

So again, say we're on a three-day program.

And we're in either of the buckets--

any of the buckets, really.

And we say, OK, great.

Maybe it's not ideal if all I select is cycling every day.

That's not a lot of balance.

I don't notice anything.

There's no upper body work there.

There's no torso work.

There's no other positions.

So maybe I'm going to really focus on cycling.

So I will do only cycling two days a week.

But that third day I need to pick something

for the other movement areas.

And that's going to make sure you

stay in a reasonable balance.

If you have an exercise that you like, great.

If you have exercise you have access to.

Again, maybe the gym is a giant pain in the ass.

And so you can say, look.

That's too far away.

The closest one is 45 minutes there and back.

So maybe I'm going to restrict myself

to only kettlebell, and bands, and running, because I

can do those in my house.

Awesome.

We've actually created some freedom

because we gave ourselves some restriction.

And now we just have to figure out

how am I going to give some movement patterns somewhat

balanced across my three days.

So really, when it comes to exercise choice,

it is selecting the patterns that you know how to execute.

Giving yourself, again, somewhat of a balance

between the muscles, and the joints, and the movement

patterns.

Making sure that you are specifically

targeting any muscle group or movement that you want.

So making sure you want to improve muscle

size in your glutes, you better make

sure some of the exercises you're doing at least one day

a week you're feeling in your actual glutes.

So you can check that box.

It doesn't have to be every exercise.

It probably shouldn't.

It doesn't even have to be every single day.

But make sure it's checked off somewhere on that list.

And the last one is, is there a strategy

in which you can progress it?

So if you're like, I'm just going

to do bodyweight exercises.

OK, great.

Well, how are you going to progress those?

In the case of bodyweight, it's really hard to add load.

Maybe you can put a weight vest on or something.

But then, maybe you don't have that, or that's an extra thing,

or that can only go so far.

So what's my progression strategy going to be?

Well, in this case, maybe you just increase the complexity

by going from two legs, like say a bodyweight squat,

to a single leg squat, or you just increase repetitions,

or you increase time you're going to hold it.

My point is, your progression strategy

will be based upon the restrictions

that you place based on availability

and things like that.

The last thing I always recommend here

in terms of exercise progression,

to make sure that you can continue

to do these things while lowering your risk of injury,

both in the short-term and long-term,

is to progress your exercise complexity in this fashion.

So make sure, number one, you can do the exercise properly

with assistance.

So let's imagine a scenario where

we're going to try to squat.

So give yourself-- put your hands on a bench or something

like that.

Now, can you execute that squat perfectly with assistance?

So you're holding onto something.

Great.

If you can't, then don't progress past that.

Don't go now to a barbell back squat

if you can't do it correctly when you have assistance.

But let's assume most people can do that.

OK, great.

Now you can move on to the next step, which is can you

do it well without assistance.

So this would be bodyweight only.

Check, cool.

We're good there.

Now you can go ahead and move on.

Can you do it well with an added e-centric load?

So in this particular case, if we're learning a squat,

we can do it well when I hold on to something, that's great.

Now I can do it well with just my bodyweight.

Now if I put a little bit of weight

on, whether it's a kettlebell in the front like a goblet squat,

or dumbbells to the side, or whatever you want to do,

can I lower it and go all the way down

and stay in perfect position?

If you can do that, great.

You're allowed to go to the next step, which is can you

hold it isometrically.

So can you go all the way down and then hold

that bottom position?

What you don't want to do is start adding load,

or speed, or fatigue if you're going down

to the bottom position of the movement

and you are out of control.

We really want to avoid this.

So I want you to show me you can go down

and you can lower the weight under control.

You can hold it in that position under control.

If we're clear there, now we can add the concentric portion.

You can now go ahead, you can lower it,

you can hold that position of most danger,

and now you can move up at whatever speed we want.

We are all good there.

Once you can show me those things,

you can add the last two steps which are now speed--

if you choose to--

and the last one, which is fatigue.

I would really discourage people from doing exercises

to fatigue, especially with a moderate or high load,

unless you can promise me you can do these first six steps.

If you can, you can basically go hog wild with your training,

and your chances of injury are very low.

Again, both acute injury, as well as long-term injury,

which is just sort of like my joints ache,

and all of a sudden my shoulder hurts, and things like that.

That's really what I'm looking for.

And once you're clear there, you can train pretty hard.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I really like this.

Because, recently, I was showing somebody how to use a--

in this case, it was a hack squat machine.

I notice they were very timid of getting

into a deep squat position.

And they cited a previous knee injury,

which has long since healed.

ANDY GALPIN: Right.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: But even with proper foot placement

and everything, you just tell, they

were getting ginger about it as they approached

that bottom position.

But over time, with pauses at the bottom,

they've become very comfortable.

And now actually are going well below 90 degrees

angle between femur and lower leg.

ANDY GALPIN: Excellent.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: So it was clear that it wasn't something range

of motion limited or it was just--

it was a mental thing, but a logical one for them.

Now, after what you just said, I think

a better strategy that I could have used

would have been to have them get into that position, just

no weight at all, maybe nothing on the sled,

and then slowly working up from there

as opposed to doing what we did in our case, which

was to just convince them that they

were much stronger than they thought they were.

We eventually got there.

But I'm realizing that there was far too much mental anguish

involved in that process.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah.

This whole progression, by the way,

this can all happen in one session.

If you can check the boxes.

In that example, you may have been fine to jump there.

It may have just been a, hey, you're fine here.

Get through it.

Oh, OK.

This whole progression might take two years.

I mean, this really depends on your background,

if you actually have injury history, your comfort,

your confidence, all these things.

So you don't need to worry about rushing

through that progression.

You don't even need to get all the way to the end

if you don't want, especially with speed and things

like that.

But again, it can happen.

It doesn't have to be like, well,

it's a month of this, a month--

well, no.

If they feel great and you can go

through one to seven in five minutes,

then you're good to go.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Number six.

ANDY GALPIN: Number six now is just order.

So you know how many days per week you're going to work out.

You know how long they're going to take.

You've selected all the exercises you need to get done.

You've balanced that across the week.

Now you just need to put them in order.

And the easy answer here is generally

do what's most important first in the workout.

There is some minor interference effect of some other things

there.

But the reality of it is, if you do the priority first,

you're probably going to be OK.

So whether this priority is a muscle group.

So in the example, you want to make

sure your glutes get trained.

Maybe do it first.

If you're trying to maximize your back squat,

you may not want to do a bunch of glute exercises

to fatigue first.

But that's not the priority we picked.

We picked a different one, which is

buckets A, B, and C. OK, great.

By doing it first, you told me the priority

was to make sure I do something for my glutes.

And then I would also like to get my back squat a little bit

stronger or whatever.

Fine.

The same thing could be done for your endurance training.

You could do your endurance training before your lifting

if you understand that that means

you might be compromising your lifting quality

of the workout a little bit.

But you might be fine with that if you

say the endurance work is more important right now.

Amazing.

You don't know the answer to that

though if you hadn't gone through steps one through four.

And that's why those things are critical.

So it makes what we call chaos management, which

is things happen in the moment.

I don't know what to do.

What should I choose?

That decision becomes really clear

because you can always go back to the beginning of my priority

was this.

Then therefore, that's my choice today.

So it provides a very simple set of instructions

for when the workout gets cut short,

when your workout has to be in a hotel,

and any number of things that pop up in real life,

whether, again, you're an athlete or non-athlete.

Either way, life will get in the way at some point.

So you need to have rules and a system that says,

when this happens, I go right back to this.

And that's my choice.

Done.

I'm moving on.

No decision to make here.

It's already been determined a week ago, five weeks ago.

We're often rolling.

So the order, again, is pretty simple.

Just put the one that is most important first.

Now, I know you like to do legs on Monday.

That's great.

I actually love that too.

I do the same thing generally, because

to me, that's almost always the most important thing.

If I miss a bicep workout, I'm probably fine.

But I really don't like missing the big movement pattern.

So I make sure that those happen on a day that

tend to be more stable for me.

Mondays are generally pretty stable.

Things get chaotic as the week moves along for me.

Others might be the opposite.

Others might want to go, hey, I'm actually

going to keep Monday as my flexible day or off day

because I like to get a lot of my work done,

get that cleared so I can have-- oh, sure.

Work it around you.

Some people love to train on Saturdays

because it's their most free, some people hate it.

Sure.

You tell me, what is the biggest priority,

and what are you the most fresh?

Monday, Tuesday, it doesn't matter.

It depends on your work schedule.

Maybe you work the weekends.

I don't know.

You decide what day of the week are

you generally the most consistent,

the most consistent schedule, and the most consistent energy.

And do the thing that is most important on that day.

It doesn't matter Monday, Tuesday, day one, day three.

We were sort of talking about this earlier.

But you actually don't even have to do a week schedule.

Our brains tend to like to go year, month, week.

But a lot of folks will even just

run this thing in terms of a seven or nine-day schedule.

In fact, we ran a nine-day training schedule

for one of my Major League Baseball players.

And he's eight or so years into his career.

And he's hitting all-time PRs in velocity.

And he's very, very good.

And it was a nine-day training cycle.

And we ran that for the entire season.

So it doesn't have to be a seven-day split.

But it tends to work for a lot of people

because most people have a fairly consistent schedule

across the seven days.

So pick the thing that is most important

and do it first, and do it on the day

of the week that is most consistent for you

in terms of schedule and energy.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I really like what you're describing.

I should just say that one of the reasons I put legs

on Monday is because I tend to get

enough sleep on the weekends.

I generally get enough sleep during the middle of the week.

But oftentimes, things will come up.

I can be pretty sure, however, that I've, quote unquote,

caught up on my sleep on the weekends.

This notion of catching up on sleep

is a little dicey scientifically.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: But I tend to be pretty rested by Monday

morning. ANDY GALPIN: Right.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: And actually, my week begins on Sunday.

And Sundays are when I get my long form cardio.

ANDY GALPIN: There you go.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: So those two are really non-negotiable.

And the reason that long form cardio is on Sunday

is that it can take many different forms.

It can take a hike with a weighted vest.

It can take the form of a jog.

It can be done with other people.

It can be family time.

It can be time with friends and so on.

And that's pretty hard to do during the middle of the week

or pretty hard to ensure, at least for me.

I also find that by bookending the week

with some non-negotiable days of training on Sunday, Monday,

then if the week gets busy Tuesday,

Wednesday or even sometimes Thursday with travel

and things like that, one can catch up toward the weekend.

It's not ideal.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I mean, ideally, it's spaced out.

But really, this isn't about what I do.

This is really just to underscore

the principle you described, which

is, I have a very clear sense now over three decades

or so of training and three decades or so

of being involved in academics, and science, and work, of when

I tend to be most rested, when I tend

to have some flexibility in my schedule.

And also, when I'm trying to combine fitness

with some of my social engagements,

which is actually quite fun.

One thing I note is that the four boxes

that you mentioned before, work, relationships, fitness,

and recovery.

Some of them do have some crossover.

ANDY GALPIN: They all do.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: A hike with family or friends

is both relationship and fitness, and so on.

But I love the principle.

Because anything that can add consistency,

as you pointed it out, is going to greatly increase

the probability of reaching one's goals.

That's sort of an obvious one.

But in an earlier episode you also said something

that I wrote down and is really still

ringing in my mind, especially now, which is that consistency

always beats intensity.

ANDY GALPIN: Correct.

Yeah, absolutely.

We used to do a thing--

when I was training NFL players for the combine many years

ago--

where Saturdays were supposed to be the day they came in

and we did the most regeneration.

So this is when they get body work done.

And we do hot cold contrast and sort of all these things.

And our attendance was like 1%.

Nobody showed up.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: For a massage?

ANDY GALPIN: Nobody showed up.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Wow. I'm surprised.

ANDY GALPIN: Seems right. But remember--

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I love a good massage.

ANDY GALPIN: Of course.

But remember, you're 18 years old.

You're likely to be getting millions

of dollars handed to you in the next few weeks or months.

And--

ANDREW HUBERMAN: He's not referring to me, by the way.

ANDY GALPIN: No, no.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I'm actually quite a bit older than 18.

[LAUGHS] And I'm not getting handed millions of dollars

each week.

ANDY GALPIN: Right.

So I would think that.

But those folks, they recover super fast.

They've never really had that.

And also, Friday night, kind of enticing.

And so, nothing was there.

And the strategy then was, what if we instead

of having a important hard training day on Saturday

we transition and it is only things they want to do.

So we basically identified, what are

the things in training you love the most,

and let's do those Saturdays.

And it turns out for those folks, no surprise here,

it was what we call the gun show.

So they would come into the gym.

And we would literally do nothing but biceps and triceps.

They'd just get a pump.

And then the deal was though, you come in--

and literally, it would come in is, we would pick three guys.

Say you, you, and you.

You pick your favorite bicep exercise.

You pick your favorite one.

You pick your favorite one.

You three over there, you pick your favorite tricep,

tricep, tricep.

And we just run a big circuit.

Like this is, how many reps?

I don't know.

I don't care. How many sets?

I don't even care.

Just pump away.

I don't even care.

We chose small muscle groups.

Not really going to interfere with much.

We're training them for the NFL combine, which is--

it's not a-- it's a legs performance, basically.

So it's like, if they smash their biceps and triceps

on a Saturday, it's not going to influence

what we did on Monday.

So recovery wasn't an issue.

Once we finish the gun show though,

now you have to go do your regen stuff.

So if you need chiro work, you need physical therapy,

whatever you're going to do.

So we would get them in the building

with the low-hanging fruit.

And then we would actually get them to do their work.

You can do the same thing.

And I honestly do the same thing.

I tend to do either--

if I'm going to do an upper or lower split,

I'm going to do that stuff either Friday

night or Saturday.

Because it's very difficult for me

to do a hard long workout Friday night or even Friday

morning for that matter.

The same thing Saturday.

I wake up.

And now it's like, it's family mode.

It's kid things.

I want to do stuff.

I want-- man.

But I can usually convince myself to be like, all right,

just go in there and go 20 minutes

and get your upper body stuff done.

All right.

I can walk myself into that mentally.

It's harder to walk yourself into your five

sets of five Deadlift.

It's sort of just like, whoa, I ain't got that in me right now.

My high intensity intervals, the max stuff,

I don't have that right now.

So I'll either go for my long steady state stuff, which

is like, I'm going on the bike.

I'm riding down to the beach, or coming back, nasal only,

I can get myself to go for a bike ride, whatever.

So I picked the thing that I'm likely to do on the days

where I'm probably going to be my weakest, quote unquote.

Not physically, but motivation-wise.

For a long time I try to-- it just got stuck in a way

where my harder stuff was Friday nights.

And I'm just like, why am I doing this?

I was having like a 50% success rate.

Just like we were having a no percent success rate

with the NFL guys on Saturday.

So you have to be a little bit tough.

You have to grind sometimes.

You have to get some motivation and go after it.

But you also have to be like, well,

this is just stupid planning.

Why put yourself in a position where

you're just failing over, and over,

and over, when I could move it and go, look,

those sessions are going to be things that are easier.

They don't require as much gusto to get up and get them done.

I get those things done 90% of the time.

Because the worst case I can be like, all right,

we're going to go do a family thing.

Give me 20 minutes.

I'm just going to run up there and smash upper body.

And you don't need--

I need a 20 minute warm-up.

[LAUGHS] It's like, I can just jump into those things

if I had to.

If I feel great, then I can still go do something else,

or I could do more, I could do a longer session.

But you're sort of immune to any situation.

So I would book-end those, I guess, is what I'm saying.

What's the day you're going to have the best day, and what's

the day you generally have the worst?

And put the programs around those situations.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah.

I love the idea of identifying the friction

points, the high friction and low friction days.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Friction meaning anything

that impedes you from training consistently or well.

And there are so many factors that ratchet into that-- sleep,

other social engagements, work.

Friday night, I also find it tough to do

any kind of training.

I do cardiovascular training.

I do interval type training on Fridays typically.

But there's a lot of cumulative fatigue and stress

that happens across the week.

ANDY GALPIN: Right on.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: And usually, for a long time,

gosh, more than a decade now, I've

been telling myself that Saturday

is the day that I try to reduce my cortisol as much as

possible from the week.

ANDY GALPIN: There you go.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: And then Sunday is the day that I

enjoy that low cortisol state.

And that's actually what opened up into the long, slow run.

ANDY GALPIN: Amazing.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I actually like to think

of myself as a bit of a mule during those long runs.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I actually have a shirt that has a sloth on it

that I wear to remind myself to go slowly on those runs.

Not that I ever run that fast.

But there's the whole mindset around

it is to be a bit of a mule, just kind of moving through it.

And the fatigue factor is more one

of at first there's just a little bit of boredom.

But then, I've noticed, there's a whole different set

of mental scapes that open up under different training types.

And this is maybe something we get

into a little bit in a future episode or discussion.

When you train really intensely for short periods of time one

way, your mind goes into a particular state.

When you do long duration training,

you're thinking and indeed even the way

it affects sleep patterns is also very different.

I think one of the great futures for neuroscience and exercise

science in collaboration is to identify

how different patterns of physical movement

relate to different patterns of thinking and vice versa.

ANDY GALPIN: Amazing.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Anyway, something maybe to just earmark

for a future conversation.

But there's clearly a relationship there.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah.

Well, when we certainly know of a pretty clear relationship

between even what we would classify as zone five exercise

and deep sleep.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: So a zone five again being you're

breathing a lot through your mouth

because you have to in order to bring in enough oxygen

to offset the acidity created by--

[LAUGHTER]

ANDY GALPIN: The carbon.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Exactly.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah. This is the high heart rate.

So I mean, if you're going to look at it

and hit a number, looking for something like 30-plus minutes

a week being in the top 10% of your heart rate.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: That impacts deep sleep.

ANDY GALPIN: Is going to positively impact

deep sleep, as long as it's done very far away from deep sleep.

So you don't want to do that at night.

So you want-- in terms of time.

So if you hit those numbers earlier in the day,

oftentimes that will enhance deep sleep.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah, I was looking at some papers

recently.

And the number that emerged from those papers

was that unless it's low intensity exercise,

trying to exercise about six hours or more away

from your sleep time would be ideal.

ANDY GALPIN: Bingo.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Now, that said, for those of you that

have to hit the gym or go for a run in the evening

and then are trying to fall asleep four to six hours later,

I wouldn't want that statement to impede

your regular exercising.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah.

there's an easy trick to that.

Just finish it with down-regulation breathing.

So that's one of our things, that if you-- because that

is a realistic situation.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Right.

Finish work at 5:00, or even 6:00, and then by the time

you're training or running or whatever you want to call it,

it's a 7:30, 8:00, you're home at 9:00.

You're eating, and then everyone's

like, you can't eat two hours before bed.

Pretty soon you run into a number of different collision

points that make you wonder whether or not

you're doing everything wrong or if it's

really worth training at all.

ANDY GALPIN: 100%.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Now, I would argue it's better

to train than not to train.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: But provided that you can still

get to sleep.

ANDY GALPIN: 100%.

So you have to walk a little bit of a game.

We run into this issue with the NBA players.

You're playing games at 6:00 at night that start.

Major League Baseball is a 7:05, 7:10 pitch, right?

ANDREW HUBERMAN: That's right.

ANDY GALPIN: And also, by the way,

we're changing time zones every five days.

UFC fighters and such, were usually training twice a day.

There is no option to train, or I mean,

we are training twice a day always.

So we have to come up with strategies for that.

And there's other non-athlete scenarios,

of course, where it's like, there is no other option here.

Cool.

So what we do is a couple of things.

Number one, the further away you can make it

from sleep, the better if possible.

We do need to train, though, around the same time you're

going to be playing.

That has to happen.

So the harder and longer we go in the training

session, the harder and longer we

go in our down-regulation post-exercise.

And that is, in my estimation, the number one lever

you can pull that can help.

Now, if it really does start crushing sleep,

you're going to have to make a critical decision there.

In general, it's not a good reason to not exercise.

But maybe you restrict to only a couple of days a week

you go all the way up in intensity.

And the rest of the days maybe 70%,

you stay in this kind of a working zone.

Awesome.

Maybe it's a longer down-regulation.

Maybe there's other strategies you can do.

But yeah.

You want to be careful of-- and we've

had this situation a number of times where it's just

sleep complaints, sleep complaints, sleep complaints.

We run full sleep studies on them in their house.

We do the whole thing with absolute rest.

We come in.

We do the whole thing eye tracking,

biomarkers, the whole thing.

And it's like, oh, you just need to stop

doing intervals at 8:00 PM.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: And I would add to

that, another incentive for being

able to train with or without caffeine

is that it's very clear that even if you can fall asleep

after ingesting caffeine in the preceding hours that

caffeine consumed in the, gosh, even 12 but really eight

to 10 hours, four hours prior to bedtime really

disrupts the architecture of sleep.

So if you critically rely on caffeine in order to train,

whatever your training might be, and you

know that sleep is important for recovery,

well, then it's pretty obvious where I'm going with this.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: So having that flexibility is vitally

important.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah.

You've probably also covered this.

But you can actually measure that directly.

So by eye tracking patterns, you can actually

identify the effects that caffeine

has on sleep independent of sleep time or not.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Right.

There are never positive effects.

ANDY GALPIN: Correct.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: That said, I am a proponent of caffeine

early in the day.

And caffeine does have a lot of--

well, it's anti-neurodegenerative.

As long as you're not getting anxiety,

it's pro-performance, both mental and physical

performance.

But, of course, if you do not need caffeine,

if you're one of these mutants that do not need caffeine

in order to go about your daily living

with focus and intensity, then, by all means,

don't start taking caffeine.

ANDY GALPIN: I'm not the hugest fan.

I am scientifically.

100% or more.

Personally, it does-- I don't do well on it.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Well, you seem to ride a little bit more what

we would call a sympathetic tone, shifted

towards more alert.

I tend to be naturally a bit more

like my bulldog Costello was, a little bit more

on the mellow sleepy side.

And caffeine just puts me right at that alert but calm place.

And I can get away with drinking it--

I wouldn't say a ridiculous, but a fair amount of caffeine

and remain there.

But I do restrict it until the time right up about 2:00 PM

at the latest is really when I were trying to drink caffeine.

Number seven.

ANDY GALPIN: Great.

So number seven and eight are pretty simple.

This is now choose the intensity and the volume.

So we've discussed those at length

in the previous episodes.

We probably don't have the time to go back

over all those details.

So remember the adaptation you're training for

and pick the appropriate rep range, total amount of sets,

as well as the intensity to then get

the corresponding adaptation.

All you have to do is select those things.

In terms of progression through a week,

the rule of thumb we say for intensity

is something around three 3% per week.

For volume, it will depend on what you're doing a little bit,

but any time you cross more than 10% per week,

you're going to start running into problems.

So I like 5% better.

It doesn't need to be as low as three.

You can jump up much more than that.

5% to 7% is better.

So if you are doing, say, running,

because the numbers make it easy,

and you're doing 10 miles per week total.

And if you were to go up to 11 miles the next week, great.

You're right around 10%.

But what you wouldn't want to do is say,

I'm running 10 miles this week.

And I did maybe four Monday, three Wednesday, three Friday.

So four, three, and three, you got your 10.

Then you wouldn't want to add a mile every day.

So Monday, instead of doing four, I did five.

Wednesday instead of doing three I did four.

Friday instead of doing three I did four.

What you actually did is you went from 10 to 13,

which is a much higher jump than the 10% prescribed.

So the same thing would be true for lifting weights.

The same thing is actually true for calories and trying

to add them, et cetera.

So the body tends to not handle those things

as well jumping more than 10% per week.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: So keeping with this idea of increasing

progressive overload, being 10% more over some period of time,

am I correct in assuming that I want to identify one, maybe

two meaningful variables and progressing

that or those variables?

ANDY GALPIN: So progressive overload

can come in the form of any of the modifiable variables.

So you could increase the complexity of the movement.

You could increase the intensity or the load.

You can increase the volume by either more sets, more reps,

or more total exercises in a day.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: What about time under tension?

ANDY GALPIN: You can also manipulate how--

the tempo of each repetition.

You can also manipulate how many times per day you train.

So you can manipulate frequency.

You can also manipulate rest intervals.

So you can progressively load any of these things.

Increase intensity.

Run a little bit faster.

Complete the same amount of work slightly faster.

Put 5% more on the barbell, or the load, or the handle,

or whatever you going to do.

That's the simple way.

If you want to think about volume, in the case

of endurance work is simple--

mileage, time, whatever.

In the case of lifting, all you have to do

is take the amount of repetitions

you're doing per set, multiply it by the sets,

add that all up.

So if you're doing three sets of 10, that's 30 repetitions.

If you did three exercises, you just did 90 repetitions.

Put that number down for Monday.

Put that number down for Wednesday.

Put that number down for Friday.

Add that total up.

So say you did 90, 90, 90.

You would look and say, my total number of repetitions this week

is 270.

If I want to go up 5%, then I need

to go up another 15 or so total repetitions.

Great that's all we have to do.

That's the increase.