Huberman LabBuild Muscle, Great Posture & Resilience to Injury | Jeff Cavaliere
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
145 min read · 28,978 words- 0:00 – 2:43
Jeff Cavaliere
- AHAndrew Huberman
Longevity ultimately is be- being able to maintain function as you age 'cause, again, it's, it's not the, the number of years, but the quality of the years. So all muscles in your body serve a function. You're training these muscles to get stronger, and you're training these... Your, your balance and your... These are all skills that can be learned and improved. They're all trainable. If it's trainable, it's fixable. [upbeat music] Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Jeff Cavaliere. Jeff Cavaliere is a master of science and physical therapy and a certified strength and conditioning specialist. He is considered one of the world's foremost experts in training for both men and women to increase the strength and size of their muscles, their overall health, and longevity. Today, we discuss some of the things that are not often discussed and considered the small things but that are actually the big things because they allow you to do the big things for your health and fitness and longevity decade after decade after decade, and to do so pain-free and while making continual progress. We also discuss the typical big things, the specific multi-joint exercises and cardio workouts that create the greatest results. Today, you'll learn some simple exercises that will strengthen and protect your back, your shoulders, even improve your foot strength, which most people don't think about but turns out to be foundational for everything, your pressing and pulling movements, leg training, and your cardio, and that will allow you to live your daily life with vigor and ease at any age. I must say I'm a longtime fan of Jeff's work, which he's been publishing to YouTube and elsewhere as ATHLEAN-X. As you'll soon realize from today's episode, Jeff is far more than just another fitness trainer. He has deep knowledge of human physiology and kinesiology, and he really understands that everybody's situation and body is different and thus needs different tools to address and solve their specific problems and to achieve their desired results. I should also mention that Jeff and I went to the legendary Gold's Gym in Venice, California, where he took me through an arm workout, so biceps and triceps and forearms, and he showed me what has become his kind of signature move, which is face pulls, which are essential for improving your posture, for your rear delts, and for general stability of the shoulders. So you can find a link to those workouts in the show note captions. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors. And now for today's discussion with Jeff Cavaliere.
- 2:43 – 10:06
Lower Back, Back Pain
- AHAndrew Huberman
Jeff Cavaliere, welcome back.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Thank you for having me. This time actually nice to come out to California-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah
- JCJeff Cavaliere
... go work out in.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah, we have a studio this time.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
[laughs]
- AHAndrew Huberman
Last time I think we were in a, in a rented apartment in, in New York City.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
It worked.
- AHAndrew Huberman
I said then, I'll say it again, you're the man. I've been watching your videos and following your training advice for many years. I would say Mike Mentzer, Dorian Yates, and you. That's-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yeah. [laughs]
- AHAndrew Huberman
... that's, uh, I've merged the principles and, um-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Very high humbling praise for me, for sure.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Well, you're 50.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Never touched gear. That's, uh, slang for steroids. You're not on TRT. You've never done it.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Nope.
- AHAndrew Huberman
And you look amazing. I know you're very disciplined with your diet, your training, but, you know, you have a... You're married, you have two kids. You're, you put in the work all over life and, you know, you're a testament to what's possible if people do things right. So today I wanna talk about a number of things, but something that I believe is not discussed enough, which you discuss a lot, and it's just been transformative for me because I also happen to be 50, is we both know that the big things like doing the regular compound multi-joint lifts regularly, that's all critical. We know the big stuff is critical, and people talk about the big stuff all the time. But you talk about the small stuff that makes the big stuff possible for decade after decade, and I credit you for fixing my back pain. I credit you for the fact that I basically have no pain despite training very hard for, you know, more than three decades. So let's talk about the small stuff-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Mm-hmm
- AHAndrew Huberman
... which is not actually the small stuff. These are... I think of it as the, the kind of hinges and, and, uh, bolts on the system that allow that system to work. So low back, shoulders, neck, these are the pieces that nobody wants to train, no one wants to think about, no one wants to talk about, so let's start right there. How can we keep our lower back strong and pain-free while also doing things like deadlifts and squats, et cetera? I'm glad you're talking about all of this. Obviously, it's like, uh, it's such music to my ears, but I think the background of being a physical therapist is, is what set the stage for my focus on these things, 'cause when I was younger, pre-physical therapy days, uh, I did all the dumb stuff too, and I did all the things, just the big things, and realized that it wasn't necessarily a path to longevity. But in the, in the immediate, into my 20s, I was really breaking down then. Like, I had knee pain then. I had back pain then. I had shoulder pain then. So I think people who are in their 20s these days have the luxury of having access to videos like this where they don't just say, "Oh, that's just, um, maybe a hard workout." Now they start to say, "Well, maybe I'm actually doing some damage here," right? "Maybe I do need to pay attention to the smaller things." And we have enough videos out there that showcase these small things. For instance, you mentioned back pain. We talk about a major cause of back pain not being structural back pain, right? A lot of the times the back pain that we suffer from in our lives is not surgical. It doesn't need surgical treatment. It just needs the right addressing of the muscles that contribute to that or how we allow muscles to get tight that w- that shouldn't get tight if we did full range of motion on certain exercises, right? So in, in, in particular, I mentioned the glute medius, right? And the glute medius is, is a muscle that
- JCJeff Cavaliere
... is going to control hip position, hip movement. So if it's controlling the position of our hips, that means it's controlling our pelvis. And if our pelvis is tilted or twisted or forward or backward, obviously the spine is literally adapting to the position of the pelvis beneath it, 'cause it's connected through the sacrum. So how is that not important, right? So all these muscles that connect to the pelvis that change its position are inadvertently going to change the position of the low back, directly the s- lumbar spine, that is going to likely cause dysfunction down the road if you don't address that. So it is these little, tiny muscles and these little, tiny exercises. So I made a video years ago about an exercise that you could do to help to loosen up if there was a, a, a, a, a knot in the glute- glute medius, right? A, a, an area of spasm, a localized area of spasm. 'Cause when the spasm's there, you adjust the way you move, right? You're in pain, so you're trying to s- move around that spasm. Something as simple as a s- leg raise, down and back while holding down that, that pressure point on the glute medius, helps to alleviate some of that sh- that, that discomfort and, and, and that spasm to the point where you could restore normal motion again, 'cause you're not avoiding pain, and all of a sudden the back pain goes away. There was nothing structurally there. Fine. That's a great video. It helped, I think, 50 million people have seen it.
- AHAndrew Huberman
We'll put a link to it.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Okay.
- AHAndrew Huberman
This is the one where people... You should w- everyone, you should watch the video. This literally erased my back pain, what I thought was gonna require surgery. Uh, you lie on your side. You, uh, you know, one leg, you know, is in front of the other, toe down on the ground.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
You put it up and back. Um, Jeff provides a, a beautiful description of what is essentially a very simple movement, but if you do it properly, the pain evaporates. It's wild. And I thought it was a back issue, but it was a glute medius issue.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yeah. A- a- again, you feel, you can re- f- you can feel referred pain anywhere. But, but what, what happens next is, great, you solved that area of spasm. Why do we get spasm? Oftentimes it's because we're providing artificial stability to an area of weakness. 'Cause spasm is, is basically the muscles holding on and saying, "I need to protect this area." And so if the muscles around the low back are protecting that area, there's a reason for it. It's probably because the muscles that are supposed to be stronger are not strong enough. So that doesn't mean that you do this one thing and you're done. Yes, you might have no back pain that day, or it might have relieved that episode, but it means that there's an area of weakness that could benefit from strengthening it. So you come back and you start to do glute medius strengthening. I d- I demonstrate an exercise where you, you put yourself up against a wall, right? And you stand on the leg outside the wall, or furthest away from the wall, and you let yourself drop. You just let your hips drop, right? They get lazy. And when they drop like that, you're, the only way you can get them level again is to slide yourself back towards the wall, and that's abduction of the hip that way to get you back to level again. That is the glute medius dysfunction, to get you back to that level position. Well, ironically, every time you lift a foot off the ground to walk, you're getting a pelvis that drops side to side, right? Every time you go in a single leg stance, the pelvis is gonna drop a little bit. The people that have less control of that have more of what they call a Trendelenburg gait, where the pelvis rocks side to side as they walk.
- AHAndrew Huberman
So like if you were looking at them from-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Behind
- AHAndrew Huberman
... the back, you know?
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yep.
- 10:06 – 15:29
Tool: Exercises for Lower Back Pain & Strengthen Glutes
- AHAndrew Huberman
So we'll talk about the structure of a base- a really good basic program, and many people talk about that, you know, sets, reps, splits, et cetera. But let's just assume for a second that somebody listening to this is training their lower body twice a week.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
They're doing compound exercises and some isolation exercises. But they're dealing with some back pain, or they're not, like 20s, they're in their 20s or 30s, or structurally they're blessed and they're not dealing with it. What are some additional things that we would call small things that make the big things possible for much longer, and also make people stronger at the big things, that people can do? Would you say, uh, back hyperextensions? Would you say-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
That's where I'd start
- AHAndrew Huberman
... uh, watch your video on medial, uh, glute medius training? What would be the exercise to insert, and how many times per week to do it, and when?
- JCJeff Cavaliere
That's a good question. So y- yeah, reverse hypers are an amazing exercise. Um, I like doing them because they're very easy to do anywhere. You don't have to have resistance on them. They make a great machine that actually provides resistance, straps over your legs that you can lift additional weight on. But f- the challenge for most people, remember, they're chronically weak in these areas, so even just the body weight, lifting of their own legs, is going to be a significant enough challenge to get overload. But you can literally do it on, like, your bed in the morning. You can get up, you lay enough of your torso on top of the bed so that you're not falling off the bed, but you can just have your legs hanging off your bed and your body up on top of the bed, and do a reverse hyper.
- AHAndrew Huberman
So raising the heels-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Raising the heels up
- AHAndrew Huberman
... so that they're parallel with the floor.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
As level as you can get them. You know, again-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm
- JCJeff Cavaliere
... the bed's a little, a little soft, so sometimes you kind of dip down as you're lifting your legs up. But it's, it's, it's sturdy enough that you can get to, uh, almost a parallel position to the floor. I like to make sure, we'll talk about this, but, like, you're moving, the muscles are doing the work and not momentum, right? So you want to hold that contraction briefly at the top to convince yourself that you actually were able to perform the movement. So you get up, hold it for con- for a second. And I think what's important on that too is people who don't have the strength in their glutes, 'cause it really is a glute weakness issue, not a, necessarily a low back issue, it... A lot of times it's weakness in the glutes that's transferring the load-to the low back that can't handle it. And people get the symptoms in the back, but it's the weakness somewhere else that's causing that. So I like to focus first and foremost on the glutes, glute max, glute med, just to make sure that they're strong enough. And again, if you test even big time athletes, we would test the rotational strength of their hips. Some of the strongest athletes, some of the biggest squatters, some of the best lungers, right? They're lunging over 200 pounds. They... You put them in position, you try to bend their, their, uh, their hip into internal or external rotation of their, of their bent knee. They can't resist it at all. So they, it just goes to show you that all the squatting, all the big lifts, uh, aren't enough to counteract the smaller muscles, right? There are different functions. A rotational muscle of the hip is not a sagittal plane muscle of the hip. It has a different function, so they all have to be strengthened. So along that, along that line, we will do the, the, the reverse hyper as a good sagittal plane exercise focusing on the glute. When they get to the top and I tell you to contract it, squeeze so you know it's the glute that's squeezing and doing the work, not that you're arching at the low back, that you're using the muscles that are already overworked in the first place. So get that up there, squeeze, reinforce that it's the glute that did the work. Great exercise. The, the glute medius, like I said, the hip bump, super easy exercise. You could do it anywhere against a wall.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Someone next to the wall.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Against the wall. You could do it anywhere against the wall. Any, anything... It is like a butt bump. You, you basically-
- AHAndrew Huberman
It's just like you raise the leg that's closer to the wall, like 90 degrees, outer one you're standing. It's almost like you're trying to slide that hip-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
You slide it up
- AHAndrew Huberman
... that's along the wall, uh, that's closer to the wall, up the wall. So it's like, yeah, it's like a kind of, like, side booty bump-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Mm-hmm
- AHAndrew Huberman
... to the wall.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
But sliding it up.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yep.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yep. And, and this is sometimes where you have to invest, and this is the small things, but, you know, they're also small investments. A little mini hip band, you know, the little, the elastic bands. They're just loops. The little fit loop they're called. Put it around your heels-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm
- JCJeff Cavaliere
... lay on your belly, bend your knees to 90 degrees-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm
- JCJeff Cavaliere
... and then just try to open your feet apart.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Right? Spread your feet apart. So now you're strengthening rotation of the hip. Or hold one steady, let one leg... It's a little hard to show here, but let one leg come a little bit in front of the other and then try to cross it over the other one, so now you're getting external rotation-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm
- JCJeff Cavaliere
... of that hip. So you're working external rotation against resistance, internal rotation against resistance. Super easy things to do. You can, you can attach a band around your, around your ankle, and then you can do h- uh, lateral hip swings, but with a component of rotating against the resistance of the band too. So I'm moving my leg out and rotating out at the same time. How do you do that? Just focus on your toe. If your toe is turning out, your hip is turning out. If your toe is turning in, your hip is turning in. So you don't have to focus so much on how do I move that? Just focus on what the foot is doing, and you turn it. As long as the knee's going with the foot, right? You're not just spinning the foot. The knee and the foot go together. So there's, there's simple things, and again, you might need a band or a mini band or something to get these smaller muscles more specifically, but it's $10, $15 for a band. It's well worth the investment if you can get rid of these long-term recurrent issues that keep coming, you know, back and, and causing agony every two, three months as a reminder of what you're not doing.
- 15:29 – 18:05
Sponsors: David & Our Place
- JCJeff Cavaliere
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- 18:05 – 23:23
Walking Exercises to Strengthen Glutes
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Once I realized that the glute medius was causing, for me, back spasm issues that were severe enough that it was immobilizing, but then it was resolved by the information you provide in your videos. I started doing the, um, the hip slide up the wall movement.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
I still do that. The reverse hyper, and then the one that you put in a video, and again, we'll put links to these, that I found, uh, a little bit more, uh, of a setup
- AHAndrew Huberman
but seems really useful is where you take some sort of rope or dog leash-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Uh-huh
- AHAndrew Huberman
... [laughs] and you put it around your waist, and then you actually have a weight between your, your legs-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yep
- AHAndrew Huberman
... hanging-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Mm-hmm
- AHAndrew Huberman
... a couple inches off the floor, and then the goal is to walk.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
And it makes you kind of have to kind of monster walk or, uh-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yeah
- AHAndrew Huberman
... and the idea is to not let the weight swing and hit your, your feet.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Right. Right.
- AHAndrew Huberman
I know it sounds really awkward, but it really works because-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yeah
- AHAndrew Huberman
... and I know it works, uh, for a number of reasons, uh, and by the way, all this strengthened other lifts for me dramatically. I was kind of at a sticking point with a number of lower body lifts and upper body lifts, and it really seems like it, it helped create a, a real stability in the lower back glute area. What is that dog leash thing doing? Uh, it's very simple, right? Just tie a weight between your legs-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yeah
- AHAndrew Huberman
... and then you're trying to walk, but not let it swing.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
What, what... Why does that work?
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Anytime you can take these smaller exercises and bring them a little closer to actual function, I think it's better. It's better carryover. So if you're talking about actually being on your feet and walking, that's a step towards function. That's, that's... You're gonna be more useful, I think. Um, but what you're doing is, as I mentioned before, every time you pick up a foot off the ground, you're in single-leg stance. So when you're in single-leg stance, if you're not contracting the glute medius on the side that you're standing on, your pelvis is gonna drop. You're gonna drop in the side 'cause you're, you're not balanced anymore. You're gonna drop towards the up leg. You may not drop if you're consciously trying to stay level because you're firing the glute medius, but for someone that has a weak glute, you just have them stand on that one leg and you're gonna see that pelvis drop. So when you're doing this test and you're adding the weight to the equation here, the weight is really to create a pendulum effect, right? 'Cause when you start to move anything, that weight's gonna wanna go in an exaggerated way. So what, what we're trying to reinforce is, okay, can you do this and take these slow steps in these single leg-- alternating single leg stance and prevent that, that weight from shifting so much, i.e. because you're dropping too much, that it would hit or bang into the other leg. So you have to be able to walk slowly through single leg stance and not allow enough of a drop by having good contraction and control of the glute medius so that it would minimize the, the, the weight itself. It would quiet the motion of the weight itself. So you're reinforcing how hard can I keep this thing engaged as I walk? And, you know, if you could do this, the faster you could move yourself and still have minimal displacement of the weight would be a good indicator that, wow, you're really starting to get good control and strength in those, in that glute medius. Another thing I like to do is, uh, um, we call it a, a suitcase lunge, right? So you do a, a, a lunge where you offset the weight on one side. So you carry it in the... If I'm gonna lunge forward, I put it on the opposite leg, right? Hold it on the opposite side. What that's gonna theoretically do is, obviously, when I lunge forward, I'm gonna wanna fall to the side of the weight. Picture having even, like, a 50-pound weight or a 60-pound weight in your hand. It's gonna wanna go that direction. In this lunge position, if I can straighten my so- self out and keep my torso rigidly in place the whole time, then I can really strengthen that glute medius on the opposite side. And what's cool about that is it's also done on a, in conjunction with a sagittal plane lunge. So now I'm starting to plane in m- uh, train in multiple dimensions and planes at one time. So a lunge in this direction, suitcase carry offset, only one dumbbell, not on the other side, obviously. You're gonna get that desire for the body to fall towards the side of the offset weight and, again, that starts to shift the pelvis up. The only way to keep it down is by keeping the hip in, abducted, and level, and that pelvis stays level. So we'll do that with a lot of our athletes and work up to some pretty heavy weights there too. And again, it is a kill two birds with one stone type exercise because you still get the benefits of the lunge, which I, I love as an exercise.
- AHAndrew Huberman
So let's say somebody is gonna do some hip slide up the wall or, and/or reverse hypers-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Mm-hmm
- AHAndrew Huberman
... if they're lucky enough to have a gym with a reverse hyper machine or, or even a-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
So just a hyperextension, right
- AHAndrew Huberman
... high bench or a hyperextension machine. Right, classic hyperextensions.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
You just go face inward.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah, the upper body moves and, um, for classic hyper, uh, heels to the wall.
- 23:23 – 27:08
Small Focused Exercises & Timing; Workout Soreness & Pain
- AHAndrew Huberman
Should those be done at the end of a lower body workout when the lower back and glutes are partially fatigued or very fatigued, or done separately at a time when they're really fresh?
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Two times. I think, I think you could do them on a dedicated day at a dedicated time. So I, I approach my ab training as ab training, and I always keep it separate. I just like to focus on h- I'm gonna do five to 10 minutes of core strengthening right now, here and now, separate from my workout, 'cause I don't want it to be an afterthought. I think it should be... It's a, it's a key component of what I do to keep a strong core, so I wanna focus it and I don't wanna add it to the end of my workout when I'm already mentally checked out, right? So I do that. I think when you start to have these issues that require special programming, right? Then you should own that special programming 'cause it's yours, it's what you need specifically. Others might need things for their shoulders or for their rotator cuff. But, like, whatever special programming is, do it as a small routine on its own day, at its own time. Or even it could be on workout day, but a separate time that you just go through as a routine, five minutes to seven minutes, three times a week or so. That's it. If you wanna put it on a training day, it's actually not a bad idea to put these smaller muscle exercises or smaller focused exercises after your bigger training 'cause A, you're not gonna compromise your big training and the goals that you have forfor that. But you also are pre-fatiguing some of those bigger muscles that are gonna wanna dominate these small movements anyway. The compensations that you're gonna see on these small movements are always gonna be the big muscles trying to kick in and do what they've always done, which is take over, and you're trying to get them to not. So if you can pre-fatigue them a little bit prior to doing these small exercises, you're actually setting the smaller muscles up for more success. Yeah, if I could travel back to my teens, and I started lifting when I was 16, and 20s and 30s, I would've started doing all of these things a couple times a week, or even just once a week, even before there wa- there was any pain. Because I had the same, I don't know if it's arrogance or just ignorance that, oh, you know, pain, like, that's what old guys talk about. Like, I have no pain. I feel fine. Like, I, I, you know. But I think by training a certain way without pain for a very long time, it's almost like the spring is getting compressed because it means that unless someone has perfect mechanics and they're covering all their bases through other sports and, and things of that sort, it's almost like the stronger, stronger, stronger you get, you're just setting yourself up for one of these things to go. And in my case, it was this lower back thing, and for some people it's their shoulder. When you're young, th- th- those things that, that appear as post-workout soreness even can be masquerading for long-term pain problems and dysfunction down the road, right? 'Cause you're... Again, when we're young, we just feel, "Hey, I'm sore. I had a hard workout yesterday. I'm a little stiff." Again, we get through it. We manage it. It's not that, uh, interruptive of our life at that point, so we move on. But I believe that those are m- many examples of what is potentially happening beneath the surface, that if you continue down that road, that normal workout soreness becomes more chronic joint pain, discomfort, movement limitations. And, and we also lose range of motion as we get older, so if we're not focusing on actually trying to maintain that, it just starts to pile up, and it's one of those things where you look back, we look back years later and go, "Wow, I can't believe I've lost this much range of motion," or, "I can't believe I've gotten to this state," when it really was just accumulation of many, many of those days of doing things where you weren't paying attention to all the little things. So it doesn't really creep up on anybody. It's like it's, it's happening, you know, and it's happening every day. It's not like you can't intervene. You just have to be aware of what you need to do to intervene.
- 27:08 – 35:08
Tools: “Old Man” Test, Functional Strength Tests
- JCJeff Cavaliere
You have a post that really humbled me, and people are gonna laugh. They're gonna be like, "I can't believe you can't do that." Well, now I can do it. I'll explain what it is in a moment. But a longevity test- Oh, boy ... that includes test of balance- Uh-huh ... strength, and, um, inner fortitude. And that's the put your shoes and socks on, standing on one foot, obviously one foot, then the other. Yeah. Not sitting down, but doing that in the morning every day. And I'll tell you, if you're training hard, that lower back's gonna ache a little bit when you first, you know, first thing in the morning. This is a very cool test, and I force myself to do it now. And I have to say a lot of mornings I'm like, "I just wanna sit down and put my shoes on," you know? And I got this puppy now, and he's grabbing my shoelaces, which makes it even more dynamic. But in all seriousness, it's, it's a very interesting, very simple test. If you could just explain what it is. Folks, trust me, you want to do this every single day. So they call it the old man test. It c- it is, uh, gender neutral though. It could be a woman test. Everybody is fair game. The goal here is to simply put your sock and your shoe on the floor on both sides. Lay 'em down in front of you. Um, untie your shoes. Make 'em sure they're, they're loose enough that you could get 'em on your foot. Stand on one foot to begin the test. Lean over, pick up that shoe, or pick, pick up that sock. Put the sock on. Pick up that shoe, put it on, tie it, and then put the foot down. Only after you've tied the shoe can you put it down. And then go and do the other side. And it is difficult. It is very, very difficult. It happens to be one of the tests that I do a little bit better than other tests. But, um, [laughs] we were joking before. I told you that I... about twice a year I still get back pain every now and then, and mine came from leaning over to put my sock on the other day, and my whole back felt like it was gonna blow up on me like that. So [laughs] there's a lot going on inside the body when you're doing this, right? Why would my back all of a sudden seize up on me when I'm going to pick, put on my sock? Because you don't realize the responsibility that those lumbar sp- paraspinal muscles have in trying to control even just leaning forward, and they're trying to make sure that you're doing it at a pace that's safe for your spine. So doing this every day is a little mini workout for those muscles. And again, we, we... I, I think we tend to get so lazy as we get older and complacent, and so that once you start sitting down, you're just gonna sit down when you put on your socks and shoes. What's the need to get up and do this every day if I'm comfortable putting it, my, you know, doing this sitting down? Or, wow, this was easier 'cause I sat down today. You can't be seeking easy. If you seek easy, you're gonna get old a lot faster. So this test is testing your balance. It is testing, again, some of the m- mini dynamic control from those muscles in the low back. It's test- it's testing your ankle mobility in a way, 'cause you're gonna get a lot of this going on, the perturbation through your ankles and your knees, and it's testing your hip strength, 'cause again, once you go on one leg, you're now talking about pelvic control the same way we did before. So you have to have good strength there. But it's not uncommon for people to not be able to pass this test. But with practice, like anything else, you're training these muscles to get stronger, and you're training these, your, your balance, and your... These are all skills that can be learned and improved. They're all trainable. I actually put a, a video out not long ago about, um, different measures of, of longevity, and one of them was that test. Another one was pull-ups. Another one was the number of push-ups you can do. And we, we can talk about these after, but the number one was, like, going back to your glute media strength. And can you lay in a side-lying plank position
- AHAndrew Huberman
With the top leg up about 45 degrees. You can keep it stacked. It's a lot easier to stay in a plank position. You raise that leg off of the other, now it's all relying on that lateral pillar strength of the underside hip, the one closest to the floor. So one arm down. One ar- or stacked. Heel elbows on the, on the, on the elbow. Okay. Heels stacked at first. At, yeah, at first. Okay. On your side. Mm-hmm. So side plank, not just lying on your side. No. [laughs] Side plank. It's not the, the, uh, the, the picnic date, uh, stance. Right. [laughs] It's, uh, [laughs] um, you know, lying on your, uh, so side plank, and then you're gonna raise the top leg up- Yeah ... to make a 45-degree angle A 45 degrees. And see if you can hold that even for just 30 seconds, and it's difficult. You'll feel a lot of shaking. You'll feel a lot of, of, uh, sagging of that bottom hip because you're, you're asking your glute medius on that underside leg to hold you up into that position. So the beauty about that series of tests, though, is that they're all trainable. So if it's trainable, it's fixable. You can improve a- as you have, right? You've- you're now much better at, at, at the test, at the old man test? The shoe test? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. The old man test. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Um, there are mornings when I wanna cross one leg over the other- Uh-huh, uh-huh ... kind of go into, like, what they call that, like, kinda pseudo crow pose they talk about in yoga. Yeah. Just, like, rest the ankle, and then it's like, "Ah." Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so- And sometimes it, it... I'll- people are probably laughing at this. Go try it, folks. Yeah. No, it's- Some people might do it just right away. It's very easy. Many people find this difficult- Yeah ... like, to the point where you're like, "I don't think I can do this." But you quickly get good at it. And, and strength is, yeah, strength is not even a, a, like, a determining factor or predictor here either. You can be very, very strong- Mm-hmm ... and do incredibly poorly on this test- Mm-hmm ... because you're not strong in these areas. Or you could just have bad vestibular balance, right? You could... It could be that alone. Once you start to lean forward or look down, you don't have good control. But it, it is testing a variety of things, and if it, if you do poorly on it, you can look a little deeper, investigate a little deeper through additional tests to try to find out exactly where your weakness is. Mm-hmm. But it, but it's a good broad-spectrum test to see how, how good your, your functional balance is. Yeah, some people, people might wonder, how do you work up to it? There's something called Velcro shoes. No, I'm just kidding. [laughs] The, uh, or slippers. Like, they're, it's easier, right? Yeah. It's gonna be cooler, right? Right, right, right. Yeah. I think, um, it's definitely worth trying. Mm-hmm. And, uh, I think identifying these weak points, um, I think is just so critical, and I, I'm probably gonna say this 20 times during today's, um, recording, but for the young guys and gals who are thinking, "Oh, like, that thing is so easy," trust me, with time, it's the gradual creep of little things that you stop doing. I'm gonna add the side plank, uh, in- Good ... 'cause I'm, I just haven't been doing much planking, not much isometric stuff, and I'm sure that I've got a weakness somewhere along the chain of muscles that's required to do that properly. Yeah. And what I love about these sorts of small things that support doing the big things for much, much longer, hopefully forever, is that they don't have to be done as part of the standard workout, and they can be incorporated into, like, you're watching something on Netflix, and you just kind of move some furniture out of the way, and you just do these- Totally ... at that time, which is really cool and important because it's not just about, like, an additional workout because people are slammed. They've got so much to do. Mm-hmm. And, like, how am I supposed to do all this stuff and be with sunlight and this and that? But it's straight- straightforward. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that, it, look, I think the thing that you've done better than anybody is practical implementation of the things that are gonna benefit people that are not time-consuming or overly time-consuming. They're eas- easily implemented. A lot of what I focus on is when we're talking about these drills or exercises to do, a lot of them are bodyweight, or a lot of them are done in minimal space because the more elaborate it becomes or the more time-consuming it is or whatever it is, there's just so many reasons for people not to do them. And they are going to be viewed as the extra stuff until they become adopted, and they realize how much they're helping them. It's always gonna be viewed as the extra stuff originally. So to get someone to buy into the concept, open up the timeframe when they can do them. Let them do it during watching Netflix. Let them do it while, me, while I'm on the floor doing some crunches after I've, or I've done my workout. Like, open up the restrictions so that you're still getting the effect, but you're, you know, you're minimizing the, the, uh, prescription of it, so it's so demanding people don't wanna do it. So
- 35:08 – 40:57
Sports, Movement Imbalance
- AHAndrew Huberman
one thing that we've, I don't think we've ever talked about on this podcast is that many people don't just work out. They also play a sport. Mm-hmm. Uh, maybe they do golf or maybe baseball or softball. Maybe they swim. In every sport, there are obviously dominant patterns of, of movement, and there's a lot that's out there about how to train to improve those patterns of movement. I'd like to ask the opposite question. Let's say somebody played baseball or golfed or whatever their sport was, and now they have imbalances that are the consequence of having done some activity like a golf swing over and over and over, standing in a particular way, and they have pain, and they are thinking about longevity, not just of their golf game, but of everything else. Tennis, whatever. Just pick your sport. I think this is very common and not commonly discussed. What can people do to compensate for these unilateral movements or for these, you know, you know, always left foot forward type stance things that won't compromise their, their game but also overcome any pain and imbalances? I've always been curious about this. That brings up the point of, like, how sport-specific training has evolved over the years. There was a time when sport-specific training meant doing everything that you could to replicate the motions of the sport and trying to strengthen those movement patterns. I think gladly we've moved past that stage of, of training because you can get better at that movement pattern by simply doing that movement pattern. You can increase the strength of your entire body by increasing the strength of your entire body so that the focus of the weight room can be to do your general strengthening
- JCJeff Cavaliere
bilaterally, right, in, in, ir- regardless of what movement pattern direction your sport favors, and improve the strength there and the function there. Because the carryover to your movement pattern is there. Like when you get stronger and then you go back to swing a bat, you're gonna still have the increased strength that you built in the weight room in your swing of the baseball bat. And you can throw harder if you're a pitcher, or you can throw further if you're a quarterback, if you improve your overall arm strength and your upper body strength. A lot of upper body throwing strength has nothing to do with your arm. It has to do with the stability of your core. So if you're getting much stronger in your core, you can have more torque generation to throw the ball further without having to do anything to your arm. So I think the, the strategy should be that when you're a, a, a, a playing a sport and devoting a lot of time to it, whether at the professional level or not, you sh- you still should be focusing the majority of your strength training and conditioning work towards your overall balanced physique, trying to get strong across your entire body. Let the skill work be the skill work, and if you want to focus, uh, there are certainly few, few things, we t- mentioned a couple when we were at the gym yesterday, but a few things that specific athletes can do to improve their specific skill, and that's fine, you know, from a strength training perspective, and that's fine, like maybe more forearm work if you're having to swing a, a racket or a bat, right? That's fine. That can, that can be done in addition to your basic core lifting. But to go back to the days where the strength training was, was basically replicating the motions of the sport, especially nowadays where you've got athletes who never stop playing their sport. It's y- young athletes. They're, they're playing baseball year-round through all these fall leagues and winter leagues, and, like, there's way too much repetition of the same movement pattern, and that doesn't end well because you, you can see what's happening these days with pitchers. Like, it's almost a rite of passage. When... How many years are they gonna be able to pitch before they have to have a Tommy John surgery?
- AHAndrew Huberman
What is the Tommy John surgery?
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Their ulnar collateral ligament-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm
- JCJeff Cavaliere
... you know, basically being replaced, or it, it tears in their elbow. They're out for an entire season, but it's like some of these pitchers, it's like you wanna, they wanna get it done early so they can hopefully come back and then have a string of years where they can dominate. It's, it's, it's crazy, but I think a lot of it is coming from a lot of overuse, a lot of repetition, not enough moving into other sports and movement patterns to balance off the strains and stresses that they're go- doing in that sport, their chosen sport, and it, and it's, and it's causing a, a lot of, uh, avoidable, avoidable stress that, again, just fixing it through a more managed, well-balanced approach in the weight room is probably s- key number one.
- AHAndrew Huberman
It's interesting. That's not the answer I expected, but, um, really cool to hear that. So doing the, uh, classic all-around weight training, you know, squats, some deadlifts, some-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
The goal should be to strengthen, to strengthen your body, to improve your flexibility everywhere, to, like, you know, if you're talking about, let's say, a, a situation with a pitcher where you have hypermobility of your shoulder 'cause your s- your, your move- your throwing requires a lot more range of motion than a, than a non-throwing shoulder, you don't have to say, "Well, I'm mobilizing my, my shoulders now, so I have to do a lot of mobility work on my, on my, my throwing shoulder." That might not be necessary. In some cases you might wanna not do that because it's already mobile enough because of the skill work. So it's not like a, a, a broad you do everything you do here, you do there on each side. You, you might wanna actually steer away from some of the things that you're repetitively using in the, in the, in the sport itself. But from a strengthening standpoint, st- you'll never go wrong sticking to the, the core lifts, building up your strength in those core lifts, and, and bilaterally strengthening your body and your balance and your coordination and your explosivity and your power. You're, you're, you're not gonna go wrong. That does transfer back over to the sport itself. People think that it has to be in this sport-specific motion to transfer back over there. That's not, that's not
- 40:57 – 46:44
Tool: Training Like An Athlete
- JCJeff Cavaliere
true.
- AHAndrew Huberman
One thing I noticed yesterday when we were training as well as in your videos is that whenever you have the opportunity to do a movement standing as opposed to seated, you'll do that.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Whenever you have the opportunity to stagger your stance a bit, not fully lunging, but offset your stance a bit, you'll do that. And then you also talked about even on a, on a dumbbell curl, leaning a bit toward the side that you're curling up, assuming you're doing alternating dumbbell curls, uh, can be very useful. Would you sort of explain the general logic for that? And then maybe we can touch into s- a few of the specific examples.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
I have a phrase, "If you wanna look like an athlete, you have to train like an athlete." Right? And, and the, the, what that really means is, like, sure, people might wanna look athletic. They wanna have an athletic physique. They want, want, wanna have the six-pack abs. They wanna have what they think is an athletic-looking physique. That's great, 'cause a lot, lot of people want that. But you have to train for it. [laughs] It comes at a price. You have... There's a way to get there, and I believe that the way to get there is by training like an athlete. Doesn't mean you have to start going out and doing, again, the, all these things that people thought is what athletes need to do to be athletic. You just have to start, A, caring a little bit more about what you do. So treat it like you're an athlete and these little things matter. It goes back to the original point. The little things matter just like they would if you were p- if this was your contract on the line. Every little thing would matter. But more importantly, functionally, what do athletes do? Most athletes, not all, but most athletes are on their feet. Most athletes move around. You move around, you're not squared up with your feet right next to each other un- un- unless you're, you know, I mean, in one phase of an offensive lineman's, uh, duty, they stand up and their feet are square, but they quickly stagger their feet for more stability. So you need to be able to operate from that position, I think, as often as you can, because it's not to produce professional athletes. It's to produce a body that's functioning the way it prefers to function. Why do we d- default do that? If I told you, "Andrew, I'm gonna come over here and I'm gonna try to push you over right now," would you stand up like this or would you put one foot back?Like by default, you would instantly go to one foot back and you try to lean into me and get, get more stable because your body instantly knows that's a more stable position. If I can train with more stability, I know I can decrease injury risk no matter what I'm doing. You talked about even something as simple as the curl. When I-- It's not just looking at the bicep, but when I turn towards the bicep and I kind of screw, I, I call it screwing down. As I screw down on that weight, I'm able to stabilize the torso a little bit more over this shoulder. I can even dig the, the arm into my side a little bit, engaging the lats, stabilizing the shoulder girdle so that when I lift the weight, I have more tension in the biceps, number one, but more stability that the biceps can work from by stabilizing the entire shoulder girdle. When I'm out in space like this, it's a little bit more of a freewheeling deal here where I don't have that stability. So is something gonna happen or go wrong from doing that? No, but that's not creating the most functionally stable body. So by turning your body around that arm, keeping it stable in s- in, in your side and curling, I'm able to create a little bit more stability there. I take it to the same d- the same way down to the ground with a lunge. When you lunge and do my favorite, a reverse lunge, which takes a little bit of stress off the anterior knee-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Stepping backwards
- JCJeff Cavaliere
... stepping backwards rather than forward. Just again, I'm sensitive to that because I have pretty bad knees from those early days in the 20s of doing things wrong with flat feet. You wanna, as you step back, A, take a little bit of a wider step on that back leg so you're creating a wider base of support, more balance, right? Rather than being completely narrow because not just staggering my stance, but staggering and widening my base of support is what I do.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Oh, this is key. It's funny, if you're, if you're in, you're in the gym with people, I, I'm not a trainer, but occasionally I've shown some people how to do some things, and you say, "Widen your stance," they immediately put one foot further out in front of the other. But what you're talking about is getting them width, the space between the, um, the insides of your feet further apart. So wi- literally widen your stance, not lengthening your stance, right?
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yeah, widen outside foot width. And, and, and especially as you lengthen your stance, widening them in, in, in conjunction is gonna create a wider base of support, more stability. So when we do that, you step back, you create a little bit of that width and balance, but as I go down into the lunge, you'll find if you don't lean your torso or turn your torso a little bit in the direction of that forward leg and kinda do that same screwing down effect that I talk about, that front leg will wobble a little bit. You'll feel that the hip is a little bit more unstable. Back to again, that single leg suitcase lunge we talked about where that hip drops and you get a lot of that instability. I wanna be able to turn and sort of screw down on that hip, and what I'm doing is basically kind of tying the muscles of the pelvis together, muscles of the hip co-contracting and creating more stability so that now when I ask that quad and, and, and glute and hamstring to, to work and push me back to a standing position, it's working more efficiently because it's on a stable base. I, I've mentioned before, if you're gonna jump and try to get, um, the highest vertical jump, jump we could, would you jump off this ground, this floor, or this table, or would you jump off of sand?
- AHAndrew Huberman
You jump off a firm, firm, firm surface.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Right? If you jump off of sand, as soon as you try to place force down into the ground, it's gonna dissipate because the ground itself is moving. When we wanna create as much force and efficient force as possible, we wanna have a stable base. So all that co-contraction of the hip when you screw down into it or even in the shoulder girdle when you're gonna then operate this, this elbow flexion, shoulder flexion movement of a curl, then you basically get a more efficient movement. So stability is a key for more efficient movement and also I think long-term safer movement.
- 46:44 – 48:28
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- JCJeff Cavaliere
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- 48:28 – 54:21
Inner Elbow Pain, Tool: Grip Modification
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Jumping around a little bit here, but I, I'm recalling the many things that have, uh, reversed or eliminated pain that is very common in anyone that works out. And one of those, you mentioned it, is pain at the kind of inner elbow point, kind of forearm, inner elbow. And I figured I had an elbow problem. I had something going on with tendonitis of the elbow and, you know, it-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Turns out it was further away from that. It was all happening at the level of the grip.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
And you said, and I listen fortunately, on pull-ups-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Mm-hmm
- AHAndrew Huberman
... to not let the bar be at my fingertips, to try and get my knuckles over the bar, right?
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
And you have a beautiful demonstration of this. It almost sounds like that trick that kids do where they go, "Hey, pull my finger."
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yeah. [laughs]
- AHAndrew Huberman
You know? Um, it's not that trick, folks. But where you, um, uh, put some resistance to each of your own fingers.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Like your, your index finger, your middle finger, your ring finger, and then your pinky finger, and when you d- put that pressure on that pinky finger, you can feel it right at that elbow.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
And so sure enough, I was causing this elbow pain by doing, you know, uh, pull-ups and, and slipping off the bar a bit, and I'm at my fingertips. As soon as I took your advice and got my knuckles over the bar-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Mm-hmm
- AHAndrew Huberman
... even though it puts, requires a little bit of a wrist bend, sure enough, I haven't had elbow pain in, I don't know, a decade. It is, uh, one of those things that can happen so quickly too. Like, you could go from having no elbow pain to the very next day having elbow pain, or even right after the workout doing elbow pain if you're doing a lot of chin-ups with this issue where the, where the bar is too far away.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
And it's just an overload issue. Essentially the, the muscle of the flexors, the deflexors of the forearm that run down into the fingers, it's, it's actually the, the ring and fifth finger.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Mm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
So the fourth and fifth finger that tend to be the, the weakest and the least resilient to that kind of stress. If you're gripping through there and that bar gets deep into the, into the fingers, or if you do it where you're doing a curl, even the bar sits too deep into your hand there, and you try to curl heavy-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
And towards the ends of your fingers. Yeah
- AHAndrew Huberman
... to the ends of your fingers. Yeah, when you're, and, and not into the, into the actual meat of your hand, it's just a lot of strain, more than that, that muscle's really built for to handle, and those tendons get a little bit strained and s- it can immediately feel like a knife in the, in the elbow feel, and it takes a long time to go away. Because how many other exercises do you do where you're gripping and, and requiring your grip to be in place to do that? Now, if you wanna intentionally do this, you can do it intentionally, let's say a, an underhand lat pull-down, like, like they call a hook grip, 'cause what people wanna dis- dis- discourage people from doing is pulling down too much with the bar, right? Causing too much forearm involvement in whatever back exercise I'm trying to do. But in that case, you're really trying to hook through the stronger fingers-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Mm-hmm
- AHAndrew Huberman
... of the index finger, middle finger, right? And, and even the just, you know, you're getting a little bit of assistance on the ring finger, but you're really trying to hook through there. All four fingers might be on the bar, but most of the force is being held through there, and you're, you're still pulling down a lot through your lats to build, to pull that bar down. So it's not like you're just letting it hold all of the weight. But that, that little hook grip is meant to discourage any meaningful wrist flexion that would take over and take away some of the work of the lats. But if you've got a history of elbow issues, you don't need to use that grip. Like, that's just, it's just not worth it. The extra benefit of a little extra forearm involvement may not be worth it for you. But for people who find that they don't have elbow issues and they wanna get a little bit of that, you can do it in an intentional way, but you really have to kind of steer away from making these fingers do the bulk of the work.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
How did you figure that out?
- AHAndrew Huberman
By having that issue multiple times. [laughs]
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I was just, again, you know, just blown away. I was like, "Okay, I've got this inner elbow pain, and I'm like curling, and I'm doing my tricep work and my back work, and I'm wondering, okay, what's wrong with my elbows?" And you know, I'm, I'm at that time a, you know, a young guy.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
I'm like, "What's going on?" And then, and then it makes perfect sense, as you pointed out. You know, ring finger, pinky finger are, are, are taking too much of the lo- at the load at the, near the tips of the fingers. Force myself to put the bar or the, or the dumbbell in the meat of my hand. And now we take a more traditional grip, right? You're not, like, relying on that, those distal tendons to have to do all that work and manage that load. It, now, now the hand, the hand can hold on to hundreds and hundreds of pounds, right? So if we can just get it into the meat of the hand, now I'm getting all the assistance of the intrinsic hand muscles on top of it. So now it's no longer a, a strain or a stress to those particular tendons. But believe me, uh, two things contribute to me figuring these things out. Number one, being a physical therapist changed everything for me, 'cause I had to think of things differently. Number two, when you're treating patients, not every- everyone, everyone presents the same. So you have to come up with alternative ways to get to the same end result. I might be able to tell 9 out of 10 people to do a Bulgarian split squat to alleviate knee pain, but for that 10th person, it just lights them up and, and they can't do it. You have to be able to figure out how to, how to work around that. And the second thing is that I, I had the unfortunate but fortunate experience [chuckles] of having to deal with a lot of these things from my life in the early years, and even still now. I mean, I still do things that cause inflammation and, and, uh, a need to reassess and look at what I'm doing and maybe why. And like you, I didn't, I knew I, when I first started experiencing that pain also in my 20s, like, that wasn't, I didn't have elbow issues. Like, there's nothing structurally wrong with my elbow, so I had to look somewhere else. I didn't look then, but I looked when I got older and had way too many of those incidents happen. So it forces you to look, and it forces me to look. I have to look 'cause this is what I do for a living, but it forces me to look and figure out what's causing this and more importantly, what can you do to stop it. Well, I and m- many others are eternally grateful 'cause that inner elbow pain, the lower back pain-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Brutal
- 54:21 – 1:06:50
Shoulder, Rotator Cuff Training, Tool: External Rotation Exercise
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
The shoulders. Um, I'm gonna knock on wood in a second because I, I've been fortunate that my shoulders haven't given me issues, but that means it's probably just next.
- AHAndrew Huberman
[laughs]
- JCJeff Cavaliere
But perhaps that's also the consequence of having, once again, listened to your content, and whenever possible, I've tried to get into external rotation, which is, uh, if I reference the Fonz, will anyone know what I'm talking about?
- AHAndrew Huberman
Right.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
So thumbs out and, uh, you know, giving the thumbs up, but thumbs rotated away from the belly button, away from the midline.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Could you explain where the shoulder tends to be most vulnerable in this business of internal, thumbs pointing toward the belly button-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm
- JCJeff Cavaliere
... versus external rotation during all sorts of movements and also just daily life?Good point here, too, is on top of the thumbs is, you know, not just the flipping of the hand itself through supination f- and pronation of the forearm, but literally letting the elbow kind of travel with that.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm. Right, yeah.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Right? So you're letting everything move together, 'cause it's the, it's the rotation that's happening in this joint, this ball and socket up top, and-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Shoulder's gotta rotate out-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
With it
- AHAndrew Huberman
... with it.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
With it.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Right, so we're not just-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
So you'll find the elbow just-
- AHAndrew Huberman
We're not just talking about moving your thumbs away from your belly button out. For those just listening, we're talking about getting the elbows-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Right, with it
- AHAndrew Huberman
... in a, in a bit more-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Mm-hmm
- AHAndrew Huberman
... as those thumbs go out, the shoulder's externally rotating-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yeah
- AHAndrew Huberman
... as well.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Which is key. And, and the, the issue with internal rotation, external rotation is that it's ... And they're both motions of the shoulder, right? We're need- we need both of them. We need to be able to, if you go back to the pitcher, he needs to be able to externally rotate and then of course internally rotate to throw the ball. I'm not saying that internal rotation is, is, is the devil. What we need, though, is the ability to control internal rotation. We need to be able, the ability to have enough external rotation strength to hold that position for longer or to c- or to be able to control, right, the ex- the eccentric control from the external rotators is what actually controls the internal rotation.
- AHAndrew Huberman
The eccentric control from the internal rotators-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
From the external rotators
- 1:06:50 – 1:15:20
Tool: Neck Training; Women, Posture
- AHAndrew Huberman
Love it. I wanna take care of my shoulders. Uh, for me, neck training has been, uh, fundamentally important for avoiding injury. Outside of the gym, got rear-ended in a car I had just bought. My first car, this was many years ago, 2005 CR-V. I'm like, driving my first new car.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Oh.
- AHAndrew Huberman
I'd driven, you know, used cars before.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Parked at the light, or stopped at the light rather, and all of a sudden just brak. Someone just ran into me. Person next to me ended up with some pretty bad whip- whiplash and back pain. I was a little sore, but, um-Nothing really. And, uh, you know, it's not a controlled experiment, but I credit that, uh, been training my neck, um, even back then. Now, I learned how to do it properly from you in your video, and we will definitely provide a link to it.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
I talk about this nonstop.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
This video is so valuable. You don't need any special equipment. Some, uh, standard plates and a towel. But this neck thing, it's not just for fighters. It's your upper spine. Posturally I feel like people don't under- Like nowadays, everyone's posture is so terrible. Posturally it j- it makes your default posture better. It's, uh, something we're always all working on. But neck training for men and women. I think men probably would be okay with having a... Most of them would be like, "Oh, cool. I get-"
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yeah
- AHAndrew Huberman
... "a slightly bigger neck." Women probably want to avoid that. Is there wa- is there a way that women, or men, but tends to be women, who wanna have a, a, you know, great posture, a, a strong neck, but they wanna maintain that kind of, you know, like, elegant neck?
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
They, they don't want a thicker neck.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Is there a way that they can strengthen the neck muscles and achieve that without thickening the neck?
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yeah. I th- I think that women would be less resistant to the idea of having a stronger neck, I think as long as we weren't talking about building massive traps along with it, right?
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
And I think that they think neck and traps, 'cause they do feed into each other.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
The reason why men who train their neck tend to have a, a better or, or much thicker look to their neck, better for men, is that they're also con- in conjunction likely training their traps, either directly or indirectly through some of the other movements they're doing, in, in a heavy way. Women who tend to train their neck directly and not focused on building their traps at the same time, they're just gonna have a stronger neck, 'cause they're not necessarily the biggest muscles in here that, that grow substantially. And again, when you look at the proportional growth in muscles from men and women, there's already a difference in how big these muscles will grow, male versus female. But now in an area where the, where the, the muscles themselves don't grow to astronomically large proportions, you really aren't gonna get that much size in the neck. And I think women are chronically under-trained when it comes to the neck. I, I can't tell you how often that you'll prescribe some kind of an ab routine, and I'm not even thinking about the repercussions on the neck, 'cause for me it's like, it's, it's no strain at all. But a lot of people will complain, and most often it's women, that just doing the crunch. 'Cause, yeah, I don't want them holding onto their neck-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm
- JCJeff Cavaliere
... and, and cranking on their neck during a crunch. They'll say, "My, my neck is hurting. I can't do that. I can't do that routine." It's, it's only hurting 'cause of fatigue, not because there's a- Their, their neck is being held in one position, and their fingers are just basically touching back there to just keep them away from cranking. And it's also to put-
- AHAndrew Huberman
That's how you want them, people-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yeah
- AHAndrew Huberman
... doing crunches. Not cranking-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Don't pull
- AHAndrew Huberman
... not pushing their... Yeah. So just touching-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
No
- AHAndrew Huberman
... the back of their head very lightly.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Just touching the back of your head lightly.
- 1:15:20 – 1:19:50
Longevity, Strength & Agility; Pain & Construction Zone Analogy
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah, so much of what you teach is about winning the short game and the long game.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
And to me, winning the long game is about being able to come in and do the big stuff year after year, decade after decade, so that, you know, when you're 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, why not?
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Right? I mean, the, the experiment of whether people can have great strength and mobility, et cetera, into their 80s and 90s w- with rare exceptions has never actually been done. That experiment is happening now because resistance training, you know, especially for women, you know, a few years back, like if it was in bodybuilders, nobody did. Now everyone knows this is part of the longevity game. So I'm so excited that these, again, what sound like small things are getting out there thanks to you because they really do make a difference. And I believe that in our 80s and 90s and maybe even beyond, people can move right and feel right and be posturally right. There's a cool video, forgive me for going long, um, but we'll put a link to it, that I saw, no, it's not AI, of a woman, uh, escaping from a, um, Chinese, uh, resting home.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Okay [laughs] .
- AHAndrew Huberman
So she's in her 90s, she's 92, and she's climbing over the front gate. She was caught on surveillance camera.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Oh, okay. I've seen this one, yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
And it's so cool.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Surprised it hasn't come on my feed but-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah, so she's crawling over the surveillance gate, and then she gets out, and then she walks away. Now she's, she's got some-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yeah
- AHAndrew Huberman
... a little bit of frailty to her, but there was a drop down to the ground and it's [laughs] a big iron gate, and she's just like, "I'm outta here."
- JCJeff Cavaliere
[laughs]
- AHAndrew Huberman
It's pretty inspiring. Well, but it doesn't... That's not to say that when you do the things I'm saying, you do the small things, that you're not gonna still have aches and pains and things that you-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Mm-hmm
- AHAndrew Huberman
... you have to be able to also manage that. Like, how can you show up each day and still manage the fact that, yeah, this shoulder's still a little bit sore, or this shoulder's still, or this, this knee is a little cranky. You have to continue to show up if you're going to, um, play this longevity game, right? Because stopping is the fastest way to slow your body, right? So I think to slow your body down to a point of, of really poor quality of life, you have to figure out how to manage through these injuries and train around and through these injuries. And, and, and a simple example of that, I always like to use an analogy of like, um, a construction zone. If there's one street that's shut down, you're not gonna, you're not gonna shut the whole city down, right? You need to find a way to redirect traffic around there so the city can operate. So if it was, let's say, that shoulder and you were doing a, I don't know, a, a dumbbell or a barbell overhead press, you can't do it, it hurts. You have to have a way to reroute that. So let's say it's a machine press. Is that my first choice based on the things we talked about? You're sitting down, you're on a machine, you're in a fixed pattern. No. But if it allows you to still train, you're getting a lot of other benefits. Num- number one, you're getting some additional strengthening of the, and activation of the deltoid. You're getting some movement through the joint itself, which we know bathes the joint surfaces and helps to provide nut- nutrition to the joint. You're moving that capsule so it doesn't get stiff and, and tight. You're doing a lot of things right, even though it might be choice B for the exercise. Let's say you can't do any pressing at all. Again, you don't shut the city down, you just take a back road, right? You just take another back road. The back road might be rowing.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Rowing is gonna still work the shoulder joint through extension. It's still gonna provide some of those joint benefits. It's still gonna provide the capsular benefits. It might not be stimulating the delts that way, but there's other exercises you can do for the delts that won't do that. So our job is to figure out how we can always have something we can do so that the option is not, or the alternative is not nothing, 'cause that's when things really start to go, go wrong, when you, when you opt for nothing. And that's when the, the aging process starts to really accelerate to the point of even just the functional aging, how you feel and, and, and the quality of your life will, will, will sink if you don't continue to figure out ways to do that. So I always felt my, my, my mission or my goal was to empower people with these options and these alternatives of how do you do these things. Because again, if someone came to me as a, as a PT and, and, and my bag of tricks contained one, two, and three, and they couldn't do any of them, then what do I do? I have to have options four and five there too. And I think that's always been my strength is to figure out not just to have option four and five on reserve, but then also have six, seven, eight, nine, and 10 in case I needed those too. And if I could provide people with that information, then they know how to dip into those at the right time to keep going, keep training.I
- 1:19:50 – 1:21:12
Sponsor: Joovv
- AHAndrew Huberman
would like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Joovv. Joovv makes medical-grade red light therapy devices. Now, if there's one thing that I have consistently emphasized on this podcast is the incredible impact that light can have on our biology and our health. Now, in addition to sunlight, which I've talked about a lot on this podcast, red light, near-infrared, and infrared light have been specifically shown to have positive effects on improving numerous aspects of cellular and organ health. These include faster muscle recovery, improved skin health, wound healing, improvements in acne, reduced pain and inflammation, improved mitochondrial function, and even improvements in vision. Nowadays, there are a lot of red light devices out there, but what sets Joovv lights apart and why they're my preferred red light therapy device is that they use clinically proven wavelengths, meaning they use the specific wavelengths of red light, near-infrared, and infrared light in combination to trigger the optimal cellular adaptations. Personally, I use the Joovv whole body panel about three to four times a week, usually for about 10 to 20 minutes per session, and I use the Joovv handheld light both at home and when I travel. If you would like to try Joovv, they're offering up to $400 off select products for listeners of this podcast. To learn more, visit Joovv, spelled J-O-O-V-V, .com/huberman. Again, that's J-O-O-V-V .com/huberman.
- 1:21:12 – 1:29:27
Cardio, Bike, Jumping Rope; Fat Loss: Zone 2 or HIIT?
- AHAndrew Huberman
Do you do cardio? I mean, you're, you're naturally pretty lean. I know you eat extremely well.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
And we can talk about nutrition a bit as well, but, um, what, what are your thoughts on cardio?
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Cardio is, is like the right foot to the left foot, right? It's, it's, it's, it's very important for the overall, um, picture of health. If you're, if you're avoiding cardio and conditioning entirely, you're not as healthy as you think you are. Um, I don't do as much cardio as I should. It's always my big confession that I don't, and the reason why is simply because I have to choose based on time limitation, and for me, with priorities being to spend some time with my family and my boys, and, and, and how much can I actually get done with work and, and my workout time, I always will take a step in the direction of, of strength training and weight training. But I try not to ignore it entirely. When I do, I jump on a bike and I do stationary bike riding 'cause I can... I like the fact that I can increase resistance on the, the pedals and kinda turn it into almost a pseudo [laughs]
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
You know, again, the meathead side of me wants to turn it into some sort of a, of a resistance activity, but, uh, of course doing it for the duration to improve my, uh, my, my cardiorespiratory health. Um, but it's also good for my knees. My knees are quite beat up. Again, that's, that's something that I'll never be able to reverse, at least not without modern medicine. But I, I, uh, I have to manage that. And anytime I try to do anything where I'm running or jumping, um, it tends to hurt a little bit. I do still love to jump rope. We talked about jump rope before. Jump rope happens to be a lot lower impact for me, as long as you can do it properly on the balls of your foot and absorb, absorb the shock of jump roping. But I would say between jump roping and, and stationary bike at a higher resistance level and done, done in interval fashion, those are my two favorite ways to do it.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah, jump rope's great.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
I haven't been doing it as much as I used to.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
And, uh, now that I got this new pup, I've got him in his little pen area sometimes.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Uh-huh.
- AHAndrew Huberman
And I'll, and I'll skip rope. I, I don't let him run around while I do it 'cause I'm afraid I'm gonna, I'm gonna whip him-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yeah, no, for sure. [laughs]
- AHAndrew Huberman
... you know, on accident. Uh, I don't wanna do that. But, um, I'd forgotten how, how effective it is at getting heart rate up.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Especially if you're doing some double unders, you know?
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Or speed up, or high knees, and things like that. The coordination piece is awesome. You know, it's one of these things, like, back to the basics feels good.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
It's also, there's, there's a gamification aspect. Like you wanna, yeah, you want a new, learn a new skill.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Can I do a single leg? Can I do it side to side? Can I do it double under, as you said? Like there's, there's, there's little built-in challenges that I think we inherently always try to like u- u- up the, up the level of what we're doing to see what we can do or what we can't. But, um, that's built in. That's not really built in on a lot of the other modes of, of conditioning, which is why people who do skip it, skip it, 'cause it tends to be unapologetically kind of the, the most boring part of training. If you're used to doing lots of different exercises and feeling the, the weight in your hands, it can be a little bit boring, but there's ways to make that more fun.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah. Do you like running?
- JCJeff Cavaliere
I actually like running, but again, I can't tolerate it. My knees are just, they, they feel like they wanna detonate when I take about, after about a quarter mile. Now, I can do it on my, I have a Woodway treadmill-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm
- JCJeff Cavaliere
... which are in- incredibly forgiving. It's like-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Which, which one is it?
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Woodway.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Woodway. Okay.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yeah, we have, we used to have them in all the, um, MLB weight rooms.
- 1:29:27 – 1:40:18
Nutrition, Tools: Calorie Counting; Plate Method
- AHAndrew Huberman
I don't know if you've ever done this, but, uh, I know you're you, and everybody has to, uh, you know, pay attention to their caloric needs and nutrition needs, but what, what does nutrition look like for you on a given day? So I don't know how many calories I take in on a given day. Um, I've never really counted past when I really first started out, and I think it's an important part of the process is people should count 'cause it does two things early on. They should count because it gives you awareness. You may have no idea how many calories you're actually having until you actually count them. You'll also become aware of many of the things that you are taking for granted that you're just doing almost second nature that are just not healthy, right? You're eating things that are repetitively that are just not healthy, or drinking things that are just not healthy. And when someone asks you to log what you're eating, you become very aware of every calorie you put in your body. So that's part of it. The second thing is there's an education that goes into learning how many calories each food has. I can't tell you how many people, they, they'll think that chicken Parmesan is the same as grilled chicken just because it's chicken, and they're very different in terms of their caloric impact. So educating yourself onto, a- about what those, um, macronutrient profiles look like for whatever food you're having is part of the process too. 'Cause ultimately, where you wanna be able to get to is can you make equivalent swaps in your head on the fly wherever you are, right?
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
That would be nutritional freedom.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
As far as what that day would look like, what I try to do is I try to build my base around protein. I always have. The reason for that is I, it's one of those macronutrients that I know I need to build lean muscle. It's one that I n- know can provide satiety. Um, it's one that I know is important to everything I'm trying to pursue and what everyone really should be trying to pursue, they were trying to be healthy. So they should base their meal around that first. Start with your protein. And I, I usually use a visual way of doing that where I just say, "Hey, take your plate and divide one-third of that plate or that meal if you're having it in separate plates or separate dis- dishes."
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
One third of that meal should come from a lean source of protein, and that could be chicken, fish, beef, whatever it is that you prefer. But have that be the, the s- the, the one-third, and then divide the rest of your plate with carbohydrates, preferably in a two-to-one ratio with fibrous carbohydrates to starchy carbohydrates. So the fibrous being the, the green, the vegetables, asparagus, the broccoli, and then the starchy carbohydrates, the rice, potatoes, pasta. I don't believe, me personally, I don't believe that I should eliminate my starchy carbohydrates. Again, inherently I'm an athlete, and I know that that's
- JCJeff Cavaliere
You know, serve a very important purpose for me, for energy, for fuel resources, for glycogen, for my muscles that I don't, I don't avoid that. Plus I know that I can never long term restrict myself from carbohydrates. So when I started out, I said I have to adopt a plan here that I know I can stick to. If it was taking away pasta and taking away oatmeal and taking away the things, like there's no way that I could sustain that. So I don't think that people should try to start out on some change to their diet where they're restricting foods they know they're never going to be able to maintain long term or keep away long term. So that if you can learn to manage them and eat, eat them in a way that's more controlled because the rest of the stuff on your plate is actually helping to minimize your cravings for that or, or controlling your portion sizes there, that's the long-term goal I think. And then overarching over all that, calorically just because it's, it's a fact of nature, fats are more calorically dense than carbohydrates and proteins, so just be aware of your fats. I, I know a lot of people who go down the path of healthy eating and they're putting olive oil on everything and avocado on everything, because they're healthy foods, but they're putting so much of it because they want to feel like they're doing, they're doing the healthy thing, but you're also skyrocketing your calories. So you have to at least be aware where, where and how you're applying your fats because calorically they will add up. I have nothing against fat. I think everybody should have it. I think it should be part of every meal. I'm just saying it should be, you need to be aware of your fat content. I try to go low sugar as much as I possibly can. I do not try... I, I try to avoid processed foods. I try to avoid, um, blatant sugars unless it's my birthday and I'm having my carrot cake. But for the most part [laughs] That's really your only quote unquote bad food all year. That's not my, that's not my only like, you know, that, that's a, that's become an urban myth a little bit. Maybe I'll have it twice a year. [laughs] But, but no, I, I don't, I don't, I really try not to, um, indulge in those things, but I'm not missing it. Mm-hmm. I really enjoy it when I have it, but I'm not depriving myself of it along the way. If people felt deprived and have it more often, you could have, I could have a piece of carrot cake, uh, once a week and probably not have anything happen to my physique. So the fact that I don't is just really more out of habit than anything else. Mm-hmm. But if you're in a plan where you feel so deprived that, you know, you're pulling your hair out and you're trying to like the, the first chance you get to just jump off your diet and, and eat all the things that you're, you're really keeping yourself away from, then you're on the wrong plan. So I think that no matter what it is, whether it be keto, whether it be the, what I, I guess you'd just call this a bodybuilder style diet that I eat or- Right ... or I call it clean omnivore. There you go. Yeah. You know, like you're not, like I basically eat the same as you. Mm-hmm. Although I, I suppose I probably be a little, little high on the fat sometimes- Mm-hmm ... just because I mean I, I love, you know, nuts and- Yeah ... parmesan cheese and a little bit, little bit of butter and some olive oil and stuff but- Which, which, which are all good foods. Mm-hmm. It's just that calorically there's an impact there. Mm-hmm. And if you're gonna eat them, what I always recommend people do is, again, you can just cut back a little bit on some of the other portion sizes to just to accommodate calorically for what you're doing. But I do think that that concept of the equivalent swaps is big because if you learn to eat the way I just suggested, and there's no magic behind what I do, it's just been very con- I've been very consistent with it, is that you'll be able to make swaps when you go anywhere. What's a protein I can have here today? What's the restaurant have? Oh, they only have, uh, uh, pork chops. Okay, fine, I'll have a pork chop. Like, like you, you can, you're visually just replacing equivalents on the plate. Sometimes it doesn't always work. I, I just did a video where I talked about a steak and a, and a grilled chicken breast are potentially, uh, the same protein in terms of their protein content, but they're not the same calorically because the steak has a lot more fat than the chicken breast does. So you might have a smaller steak to make that equivalent swap out. Mm-hmm. But that's only gonna come through your understanding and knowledge of the foods and what they contain, so that early phase of learning what they have is, is important there. But ultimately, nutritional freedom comes from the ability to be consistent with what you do. I talk a lot about the fact that we can get to the gym, we can train for an hour. It's not easy for people especially to do it at a high enough intensity level, but we can train for an hour, go home and feel like I did my work today, I feel good. I did what I was supposed to do. Mm-hmm. Great. Your nutritional job just started. You now have to figure out how do I navigate the next 23 hours, whether I'm asleep or I'm awake, but how am I gonna navigate the next 23 hours? Because that's what nutrition is. That challenge is infinitely harder. And the reason why a lot of people struggle with their weight is because they have to figure out how to get that right and do that in a repeatable way day in, day out, day in, day out. And I've been doing what I've been doing here now with my nutrition approach for 30 years. 30 years. So when people ask me is it hard, it's, for me it's not hard at all. But it wasn't super easy in the beginning. It just take, there's a process to go through to get it there, and I was willing to, to go slowly but also not sacrifice the things that I really knew I wouldn't be able to live without, so therefore I can live with it for forever. And I think people make way too aggressive changes when it comes to nutrition. And basically you're not just changing your diet, you're changing your habits and you're changing your lifestyle. So when you go and you start making these radical changes to your nutrition plan because you're on a diet, it does not work. Listen, what you described, what I'll just call clean omnivore is, uh, I think is, it's just an awesome way to approach nutrition for a couple of reasons. One, it works. Like you said, it's flexible. Even with travel, you can always make some adjustment toward that. It handles the protein needs thing pretty much on its own. Mm-hmm. I mean, you have to make sure you eat enough of those meals and enough protein. Yeah. But as you were saying it, I, I realized that it gets people, if they adopt this mindset that you do, that you have for nutrition, it gets them out and away from the marketing based draw of nutrition. Mm-hmm. 'Cause people say like, oh, like protein bar or you know- Right ... high, high protein yogurt. And listen, there's some great yogurts. Uh-huh. I love Bulgarian yogurt. Mm-hmm. It's like Greek yogurt's great. Bulgarian yogurt, no, no disrespect to the Greeks. Love Greek food by the way too, but Bulgarian yogurt- Bulgarian's better ... so good. Full fat Bulgarian yogurt or low fat Bulgarian amazing. And
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah, and it, you know, the Bulgarians-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
[laughs]
- AHAndrew Huberman
... are known for their strength in many ways. But you get outside that, the marketing pull-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Mm
- AHAndrew Huberman
... and you start thinking about food for its macronutrient content-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yeah
- AHAndrew Huberman
... and its micronutrient content and quality as opposed to, like, the packaging-based stuff. 'Cause even the non-processed or non-highly processed foods, mostly we're reaching for them because of what's on the label, like the colors, the, the words and these kind. And what you're describing is completely different. It's getting to the, the, the actual food.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
I think that's a very im- uh, very important not so subtle distinction, and once people make that switch, they're really in the driver's seat. It's not like you're, like, have to go prepare every meal, this kind of thing.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Well, yeah. I mean, and again, even with some of the, the push towards higher protein foods now, again, the packaging is brag- bragging about the protein content, but they've also increased the sugar or they've increased the fat, and it's like you've, you've w- all you've made is a higher protein... I mean, l- even Snickers has a high protein bar.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Are you serious?
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yeah. I think it's Snickers or Milky Way, they have a high protein bar. It's like, okay, this is, this is insanity. So, I mean-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Show me the C-suite of the Snickers, uh, you know, I'm gonna get in trouble for this-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
[laughs]
- AHAndrew Huberman
... but whatever. Um, I wa- I wanna see how fit these people actually look.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
[laughs] Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
You know? And if they're eating that stuff.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
That's right, right.
- AHAndrew Huberman
You know? It's like, uh, something tells me they're not. Yeah. Tha- thank you again for, for being a voice of reason in, in the nutrition space.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yeah, and I'm not a nutritionist, you know. I, I, I... And people are quick to remind me of that when I, whenever I speak of nutrition. I'm only speaking from my experience, both with myself and anybody I've ever advised on how to do that. It works, it's, it's sensible, and, um, it's something that could be sustained.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
So for me, that's what's most important with nutrition. And again, I don't fixate on any one particular way. If, if doing keto works for you, great. As long as you, you can sustain your, your eating that way, great, 'cause all we're trying to do is manage our weight long term and, and, and not sacrifice other elements of our health in the process. So if it works for you, cool. But this is what's worked for me.
- 1:40:18 – 1:48:15
Foot Stability, Tool: Foot Strength Test; Longevity
- AHAndrew Huberman
I'm starting to see more content out there about foot strength. You've mentioned you have flat feet.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Mm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
I, I, uh, had some foot injuries from skateboarding years ago. Broke my left foot twice, um, quote, unquote, " snapped arches". It's not really a thing, but, um... And I've started to think about, you know, foot health and foot training and stability. And, uh, so on the one hand, it seems kind of silly. It's like, oh, really, we're gonna start training our feet? But on the other hand, you know, our feet are always in contact with at least our shoes, if not the ground. So what are your thoughts on, um, this notion of flat feet, um, foot strength, and how it plays into stability and, uh, and performance, and just overall ability in life?
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yeah. It's actually something I wish I had done more of at an early age. One of the easiest ways to test this is to, especially for someone like me who has... I mean, I have flippers for feet. Flat out, just flippers.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Is that genetic or you-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Um-
- AHAndrew Huberman
... sports-based?
- JCJeff Cavaliere
I think it is partially genetic. My mom had pretty flat feet, and then I also think that it was y- years of doing things, um, without addressing that.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
So I was, I was... As I started to lift weights and applying a lot of external force and load onto those feet that were not able to support that, it just got worse and worse. They, they definitely... They didn't always, they weren't always as bad as they got to. But I wish I had done more for it at an early age, because even now, if I were to go back and try to train the intrinsic foot muscles more, it's, it's just not gonna reverse the damage that I've done in the knee to this point, so I'm less motivated to try to do it.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
'Cause I've also figured out how to manage with the flat feet now to decrease the impacts of it, so I'm not so motivated to go jump in now and spend extra time on something that may not have a huge impact for me. But for someone who's just starting to, you know, deal with flat feet and the weakness in the, in their feet, um, I would definitely jump in and do something. And, and the easiest test is simply to put a towel on the floor, put your foot on it barefoot, try to scrunch up the towel with your feet. And, and if you start to rapidly cramp up in those foot muscles of yours, it again, it goes back to what we talked about before in the low back. The cramps are coming from a lack of, of strength. They're trying to provide support in an area that doesn't have it. So if, if you don't have intrinsic support or arch strength, then you're trying to ask the foot to do too much of what it can't. Even a simple scrunching or activation of those muscles to scrunch the towel together is too much for you to handle, kind of like the weak neck on a crunch. You have very weak feet, and you would benefit from doing a lot of those activities that help to do that. Some people recommend, uh, uh, running in sand. Some people recommend scr- using these towel drills. Um, just even just balancing barefoot and doing single leg balance drills barefoot are gonna c- not just cause ankle, uh, strength improvements, but intrinsic foot strength improvements. They're all good things to do because you can improve... They're muscles. They are literally muscles, too. You can improve the muscle, uh, muscular strength of your feet, and when you do, you can, I think you can start to restore some of the natural arch that you've lost to the foot. If it's, if it's because of tendinous, um, dysfunction that's there, inherited, as you said, a genetic, um, um, predisposition to this, you may not be able to, to, to have the arch of somebody who has naturally better arches. But you could certainly create enough of an arch where all the arch is really doing is it's just changing the position of your ankle joint itself.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Right? So, uh, of, of how the tibia sits on your ankle. If the, if the foot collapses, the tibia is now torqued, essentially, on, in the, in its relationship to the foot. And so now every time you step, whatever forces are, are being incurred on the ground are being sent up through the ankle, into the knee, into the hip, into the back. So you're just trying to maintain a better, more natural alignment between the tibia and the foot itself. So that's what happens with the, with the, the, the, the weakness of the foot is you're basically allowing it to collapse too far to start to create that torque in its relationship to the tibia. So if you can start to increase the strength of those muscles resting, they can basically maintain a higher arch or a more natural position that's more aligned with the tibia, and that's where the benefits come from. Something I knew nothing about back in my 20s. Nothing. I didn't think to, for, uh, at all to do that. All I did was go put an orthotic inRight? Which basically put me in a better position for that. It lifts the foot up and it put me in a better alignment to try to start decreasing some of the ongoing damage I was doing to my knees by being in that torque position, but did nothing to actually fix the problem itself. So-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah, like wearing braces.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yeah. Exactly. So-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Not in mouth braces, but like a knee, knee brace.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Well, I was gonna say, right. Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Like a mouth brace actually would actually-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah, yeah, right
- JCJeff Cavaliere
... create some long-term change.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Right.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
But this is doing nothing but, yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Right. Limb brace.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
You know, um, this is something I've been thinking about and reading up about a lot that you might find interesting, and I don't know, may- maybe, uh, since you're so much, uh, more versed and formally trained in, in, uh, you know, strength training and these c- uh, offsetting these unhealthy compensations. Been spending a lot of time looking at how the human body degenerates as it gets older.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Mm-hmm.
- 1:48:15 – 1:49:53
Sponsor: Function
- AHAndrew Huberman
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- 1:49:53 – 2:00:30
Warm-Up Sets; Reps in Reserve or Train to Failure?; Work Sets
- AHAndrew Huberman
There are millions of hours of content on the internet about body part splits and ways to train, so I know you've covered essentially all of them, but maybe we could do a pseudo yes/no, uh-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Mm-hmm
- AHAndrew Huberman
... Q&A type thing, uh, for a moment about body type splits and rests and training to failure, et cetera. And then I have a very specific question about training splits that relates to real life and how to incorporate a resistance training program into real life in a way that's truly sustainable. Okay. So first things first, how many warm-up sets per exercise typically? Depending upon what you're doing, and [chuckles] we, we, we're right off into the nuance of all this.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
'Cause the nuance is really everything here. When we talk about muscle splits, and there's so many factors that contribute to this, but let's say you're doing, just for sake of argument, you're doing a pull workout. If, if I'm doing pull, it would be, let's say back and biceps and
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Even rear delts if you wanna put them on the same, same day. So y- you would warm up your bigger muscle group first. So let's say you start with back and you warm up the first exercise you're doing there. You can do a general body warm-up like we did a little warm-up for our arm workout yesterday, which is actually a, a shoulder warm-up. We talk about in that video why. But you do a little general warm-up first, and then you start the first exercise with lighter weights to warm up. I, I'm, I'm doing two or three warm-up sets and I'm done. As long as I feel like I've sufficiently, uh, warmed up that movement pattern I'm gonna do before I start to load it, as long as I feel like the joints, I've got all the creaks out and I feel like I've, I've, I've done the, enough of an assessment of how everything feels for that day, then I'm ready to go. People spend way too much time warming up to work out. You just get yourself ready, and what happens is the workout itself becomes the rest of the warm-up you need for the subsequent exercises. Once you get through that first exercise, you're usually ready to go, and we're talking about then shifting focus to, let's say, even the biceps. My biceps have been done, been working every one of my pulling repetitions, whether I was rowing or doing pull-downs in some way, so there's no more warm-up after that.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Train work sets to failure or stop with r- so-called reps in reserve?
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Oh, this is a great one for me. Uh, I mean, if, I'm failure. I'm just, I, I understand the science shows that they can get close, but it's also very heavily dependent upon, uh, meaning failure or not failure, very heavily dependent upon volume. So when you're looking to do a workout that is gonna have, you can do it in 30 to 45 minutes, have a high impact in terms of its ability to stimulate growth, you're gonna train to failure. With, with me, you're gonna train to failure. And I like objectively training to failure because I know I got to failure. I'm not talking about getting to a point where I don't recognize the exercise I'm doing, where I'm compromising the, the, the quality of the exercise I'm doing. I'm not talking about doing it on the comp- the more compound or complicated exercises that do require s- synchronized movement for multiple muscle groups, 'cause it could y- like let's say a row, a heavy row, could start to get dangerous if you're losing body position 'cause of fatigue. So we're doing it on the, the exercises that are the hypertrophy based exercises, a little bit more focused on one single muscle group, a little bit more isolated in nature. So for instance a, uh, um, a single arm row versus a bent over barbell row. That'd be a good difference between the two.
- AHAndrew Huberman
So you won't take the bent over barbel- barbell row to failure necessarily?
- JCJeff Cavaliere
No, I wouldn't do, I wouldn't recommend taking that all the way to failure.
- AHAndrew Huberman
It'll get close.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
It'll get close, yeah. Oh yeah, for me, it's always gonna be close. My criteria there would be form breakdown.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
So as soon as my form started to break down, I might've had another two reps left or three reps left, but that's it for that on the barbell row.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Whereas if I'm doing a... Here, here's a better example. If I'm doing a one-arm cable pull-down for my lats, which I love that exercise, gets a really good stretch on the lats to come down. Like I could, I, it could look a little ugly at the end where I'm just doing a couple partial repetitions or something just to, just to add a little bit more stimulus-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm
- JCJeff Cavaliere
... that with no extra risk to my, to my body from doing it. So there's the difference between them. But I'm always advising that you're training towards the, the, the high end, unless you're training for strength, which is a whole different game.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
That's a whole different set of rules. It's a whole different stimulus that you're trying to build there. That is high, high loads that you're trying to manage efficiently, not with inefficiency to try to force muscle growth. So that's a whole different ball of wax, and you're really trying to, uh, stay away from true failure there. It's actually not in the way you would actually build maximal strength, 'cause maximal strength relies on clean, efficient, well-performed repetitions done cumulatively over time. That's how we get neurologically stronger.
- AHAndrew Huberman
And a lot more volume.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
A- and a lot more volume, right.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
So it, that, that's a different, that's a different game here.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Uh, so for squats and deadlifts, are you taking them to failure?
- JCJeff Cavaliere
No, same, same concept as the row. Those big o- those big presses like that, I'm not gonna... Or, or s- leg movements, I'm not, I'm not doing t- true failure on those.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
I can do other exercises and different variations. I could do a Bulgarian split squat to failure.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Right? 'Cause it's a g- I love that to failure because when I go down and I can't go up anymore, I just simply drop the weights right to the floor right next to me.
- 2:00:30 – 2:13:58
Training Frequency; Tool: Real-Life Constraints, Split the Splits
- AHAndrew Huberman
In terms of frequency of training a given muscle group across the week, I'll just say two things that most people don't think about. One, there's nothing special about a week. I mean, we use a week as a-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Uh-huh
- AHAndrew Huberman
... as a, as a division of time, but muscles don't really care about weeks.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
They care about stimulus and recovery.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Uh-huh.
- AHAndrew Huberman
The adaptation, the hypertrophy, the strength. So I consider myself somebody with a relatively poor recovery quotient.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
I can hit each muscle group directly hard once per week. So sets to failure, um, somewhere in between what, say-
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Mm-hmm
- AHAndrew Huberman
... Dorian does and what you do. You know?
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Uh, yesterday's workout felt slight- slightly higher than the normal volume that I would do.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
The workout I did with him was slightly lower. So somewhere in between. But there's a lot of indirect training. Uh, for instance, I'll train my legs really hard one day per week. But then I'll also do a HIIT workout on the assault bike. And yeah, it's not a squat workout, but my legs get some stimulation from that.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
My lat- my lats do too.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
And I'll do a sprint workout one day per week. So that's what works for me. For you personally, before you make a suggestion to the larger world out there, how often can you directly hit a muscle group with the kind of intensity and volume that we did in the video that, you know, we provide a link to?
- JCJeff Cavaliere
I can only directly hit that muscle group the same as you, once a week, with that level of intensity. Even in what we were doing yesterday, a lot of my focus is on you. I'm trying to focus on making sure you, you're doing what you're doing right. Um, I'm trying to, like, you know, coach my way through what I'm doing. So it's like if it was just me in my own gym, I might've even zoned out a little bit more, gone a little bit harder, got a little bit u- uglier face when I was doing my repetitions that were hard. So it might be even a little notch above what, what was shown in our, in our video in terms of intensity. I can't do that more than once a week for a muscle group. Now-
- AHAndrew Huberman
But you're also training back, you're also training chest, you're also training shoulders on a separate day in that case.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
Well, that's the key, right?
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
So what I... So when people recommend higher frequency sessions, or every f- every 48 hours or t- twice a week minimum and all that, you are also forcing yourselves into some splits that have a lot more muscles being trained at once. 'Cause in order to get back to them again in the same seven-day week period, you have to do multiple in one day. So let's just say in a push-pull legs scenario, you have to do all your pushing muscles. So right off the bat, you're doing chest, shoulders, triceps in one day. I find even that to be a lot to askFor, for me at times, not all the time, but especially if I'm short on sleep and short on time that day, I, I can't get through all those and get an adequate stimulus because I'm, I'm, there's just too much work to be done. So that creates a need to have to condense into these multi-muscle group splits that you go through the push, you go through the pull, you go through the legs. Now you gotta have, let's say, one rest day, come right back again. So you're training six days a week. Some people can't manage that either. But what I do is I say, all right, if I train, let's just say biceps like we did, and I do them really hard, and I even just did biceps and triceps, say. If I did those two, I still have to get through legs, I have to get through shoulders, I have to get through chest, I have to get through, uh, I, I break legs into anterior and posterior chains. That's sort of two workouts. I, I have to get through a lot more in the week. So if I had to get it all done in one week, I would run out of time. I-- First thing I do is I extend beyond the seven days. So I break that rule 'cause I, I realize, like you said, that our body does another difference. So it's okay if it takes me a little bit longer to wrap around before I do whatever the arms again, let's say in this case, the arms again. So I break that rule. It could be nine days for me in terms of my cycle. But I know that when I come back after biceps, if I do two, let's say I do posterior chain legs, and then I do, um, uh, let's say I do after that, uh, chest, right? Even just a single muscle group. When I come back and I do back, the reason why back is following chest is I'm gonna give my chest a reprieve from the day before. I'm gonna go pulling when I was just pushing. Neurologically, I'm giving myself a complete break. But I also know that I'm looking backwards to when I did biceps, and it was 48 to 72 hours prior that I did biceps. When I do my back, I know I'm gonna get indirect work for my biceps again, guarantee. So e- And if I don't know that, I can make sure I do by doing underhand rows. I could do underhand pull-downs. I could do chin-ups rather than pull-ups if, if I feel like I didn't adequately stimulate my biceps that day. So I can make selections in these back exercises that indirectly hit the biceps. That's a lot of volume. That's enough. Like you're getting direct volume. There's no rule again that says it has to be directly hit to contribute volume to the work being done by, by that, that, uh, muscle group. So I come back and I do my indirect volume there. And a lot of times these studies actually, uh, spoke to Brad Schoenfeld about this when he spoke at my event. They don't do a lot of accounting for the indirect work 'cause we can't quantify what indirect contribution that row had to a bicep. So there's not a lot of data around that anyway about how much contribution the indirect work works through. So when they do these studies and they look for how much total volume, they're looking at direct work for that muscle group. So I feel as if it's, um, it intuitively from my experience, I know that I definitely get another exposure for that muscle group and that contributes to the overall volume. And then again, if it takes me a little bit longer to wrap around based on how I'm pairing things together, then so be it. But I'm, but I'm getting that indirect work, but never twice directly. So in some sense, you are similar to the Mike Mentzer, um, philosophy, not of one set to absolute failure 'cause he was really, really on the far end of things there. Um- I did that too, I just couldn't sustain that [laughs] . Right. But in terms of not making the seven-day week the, the, uh- Yeah ... the holy grail of how you organize your schedule. Because, you know, Mike, I was fortunate enough to know him. Um, I paid him for a consult- Yeah ... and got to know him over the years, you know, before he unfortunately passed away. And he had me training like, uh, I think it was like shoulders and arms, rest two days. Yeah. You know, then it was like legs, rest two days, and then chest and back and rest two days. And he said- It was mind-blowing. Yeah, it was, it was mind-blowing. And the, the problem with that, I think at, for a beginner, is you get results. You certainly get results. Mm-hmm. But you don't get the opportunity to develop the skill of training. Mm-hmm. I mean, there's, as you, you know- Or the enjoyment of it, right? Or the enjoyment. Mm-hmm. So, um, three, maybe four days a week of resistance training for me just is like the, the sweet spot. Mm-hmm. But as with you, I've found that I can give myself permission, like if travel comes up or a poor night's sleep or some extra workload or something, like, okay, there can be an extra day after legs or you can, you can modify things. Which brings me to, uh, my other question. Yesterday, uh, after we were training, I learned something remarkable, which is there are times when you will split your split simply based on, uh, real-life constraints. Mm. And you gave a beautiful example. I'm, I'm smiling already. Um, you said, you know, there are times when, uh, you're supposed to train at night, but you go in to read to your boys or spend some time with them before sleep and you'll, you'll like fall asleep next to them. [laughs] That's more often than not. Yeah. So then you'll, you'll go into the gym at, at your home gym at like 10 or 11 o'clock at night, and you'll do half of your leg workout. Mm-hmm. And then you'll split, literally split the split and come back and do the remainder of that workout, um, a few days later. Yeah. I, I love this example because it's the real world. Yeah. And obviously you're prioritizing time with your boys, and that's what really matters. That's why you're training in the first place. Mm-hmm. I mean, yes, to have your physique, et cetera. Yeah. That motivates me now. That's what motivates you to be around for a long time. So splitting the split, you wouldn't suggest it to people, but life happens. So what does that look like? Is it that you're doing like your quad workout and, and then you're, um, normally you would also do, uh, something else, but you're doing the other stuff later or maybe doing three sets of squats and coming back two days later and doing the other three sets of squats? So here's the irony of it. Um, I don't know if I wouldn't recommend splitting the split. Mm. You know, I feel like I'm starting to learn that splitting the split is me breaking a bad habit that I was unwilling to break a long time because of, because of the same mentality that led me to think of a seven-day training week, right? That I think what's happening and that I've been seeing is that splitting the split does a few things for me mentally. It recharges me on a night where I really don't have a lot in the tank. If I get over there and I was just sleeping for the last 30 minutes or 45 minutes, I'm not like in the greatest state of mind to train. But if I know that the requirement is, let's just get through, if I'm gonna do my shoulders, let's say, um, let me get through half of what I would normally do.I'm gonna focus today on the non-strength focused stuff because I'm just not neurologically prepared to do that right now. So let's just work on the lateral raises, the strict lateral raises in that case, um, the, um, the, the hip exercise I like is the hip hugger. It's just different exercises I would do that would be perceived as the, the non-compound exercises. And I'll do those, and what I find very quickly is that because I can ease into those exercises, they're not as heavily loaded, but they're high intensity. It doesn't have to come from the load, it comes from the effort. I can ease into them. After one or two sets, I'm good and I'm like kind of into it, and I know that once I'm done with these six sets or so, I'm done for the night and I can come back and do my strength work when I'm ready, which would be two days later usually. Sometimes the very next night. Really, I'll just split it to the next night and whatever was planned gets bumped one spot. It's gonna extend that training week even further-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm
- JCJeff Cavaliere
... so that nine days can become, you know, 11 or 12. Uh, but I, we talked about recovery before, like it seems to be working well with, with me for my recovery at this age. And again, I think this, I have very bad sleep habits only because, uh, the result of working out at 11:00 or 12:00 [laughs] is you... And, and by the way, eating dinner after that, that's my dinner time. Like eating dinner after that, you know, I get to bed 1:30 in the morning and I'm getting up at 7:00, or I get to bed at 2:00 and I'm getting up at 7:00. Th- this might be what works for me best right now because my, I don't have the recovery through as much sleep as I should get. Now, I know a lot of people yell and say, "Well, you need to work on your sleep and get better recovery." I understand that. Right now, this little pattern is where I'm in. You know, it can be fixed by me training earlier in the day, stepping away from work and training earlier in the day. I, I haven't found the time or the way to do that effectively at this moment, so this is what I have to navigate. And I encourage people to do the same thing. Find what works with your current schedule. You can have an eye towards fixing it, but what works for your schedule to get you through this time period? I think it's working because I have more recovery time in a less recovered sleep state that seems to still be progressing 'cause I can still lift heavier than I have been able to. I'm still able to, uh, to, to create effective workouts for me. I feel, I feel good. My joints are actually feeling good. Things are feeling even a little better than they were, so it happens to be working for me. So I, I, I might be changing my mind a little bit about frequencies and volumes in terms of what I do in a given workout. And accepting the fact that it can happen over two days is so, like, relieving-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm
- JCJeff Cavaliere
... 'cause it's like, "Oh, I don't have to bring it all today. I can just sort of get this much done today." And it allows me to have a higher effort to handle, again, some of the lower volumes that we're doing. So it's, it's like a win-win all around. And the kids like me more for it, too. [laughs]
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah. Well, and someday they'll see this and they're gonna see, uh, so much of your content. I mean, they're, they're, they're grateful for it.
- JCJeff Cavaliere
They're totally disinterested right now. [laughs]
- 2:13:58 – 2:16:47
Zero-Cost Support, YouTube, Spotify & Apple Follow, Reviews & Feedback, Sponsors, Protocols Book, Social Media, Neural Network Newsletter
- JCJeff Cavaliere
you. Thank you.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Jeff Cavaliere. To learn more about his work and to find links to ATHLEAN-X resources, please see the show note caption. In addition, you'll also find links in the show note captions to the workout that Jeff and I did and that was referenced a few times throughout the episode. So that's a link to a proper workout for the biceps, for the triceps, for the forearms, and Jeff's signature move, face pulls. If you're learning from and/or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero-cost way to support us. In addition, please follow the podcast by clicking the follow button on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. And you can now leave us comments at both Spotify and Apple. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you'd like me to consider for the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols: An Operating Manual for the Human Body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and it's based on more than 30 years of research and experience, and it covers protocols for everything from sleep, to exercise, to stress control, protocols related to focus and motivation, and of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included. The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. You can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols: An Operating Manual for the Human Body. And if you're not already following me on social media, I am hubermanlab on all social media platforms, so that's Instagram, X, Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn. And on all those platforms, I discuss science and science-related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the information on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, it's hubermanlab on all social media platforms. And if you haven't already subscribed to our Neural Network Newsletter, the Neural Network Newsletter is a zero-cost monthly newsletter that includes podcast summaries as well as what we call protocols in the form of one to three-page PDFs that cover everything from how to optimize your sleep, how to optimize dopamine, deliberate cold exposure. We have a foundational fitness protocol that covers cardiovascular training and resistance training. All of that is available completely zero cost. You simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the Menu tab in the top right corner, scroll down to Newsletter, and enter your email. And I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody. Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Jeff Cavaliere. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science. [outro music]
Episode duration: 2:16:49
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