Dr. Andy Galpin: How to Assess & Improve All Aspects of Your Fitness | Huberman Lab Guest Series

1. 0:00 – 2:04

   Dr. Andy Galpin

   1. AHAndrew Huberman0:00

      Welcome to the Huberman Lab Guest Series, where I and an expert guest discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today's episode marks the first in a series with Dr. Andy Galpin. Dr. Andy Galpin is a professor of kinesiology at Cal State University, Fullerton and one of the foremost world experts on the science and application of methods to increase strength, speed, endurance, hypertrophy, and various other aspects of fitness, exercise, and sports performance. Across this six-episode series, Dr. Andy Galpin pulls from his expertise working with everything from professional athletes to recreational exercisers and teaches us the mechanisms, logic, and specific protocols for how to achieve any of the number of different exercise adaptations that I mentioned a moment ago, ranging from strength to endurance, hypertrophy, and everything in between. We get really far into details, but at all times, paying attention to the macroscopic issues. That is, how to create a program for endurance or strength or hypertrophy or speed, or one that combines all of those. We also talk about supplementation and nutrition and how to maximize recovery for each of the different types of exercise adaptations. During today's episode, Dr. Galpin teaches us how to assess our level of fitness, and more generally, how to think about fitness, so that we can best achieve our fitness, exercise, and performance goals. Doctor, Professor Andy Galpin, I'm super excited to have you here. You're such an immense treasure trove of information on physical training and optimizing for specific goals and outcomes with physical exercise. I'm curious, however, so many people have different levels of fitness. Some people are professional athletes, of course, but most people are not. Many people exercise regularly. Some people are trying to do that more. Some people are doing too much of that. They're over-training. They're not recovering enough. If we were to take a step back and

2. 2:04 – 5:40

   Assessing Fitness

   1. AHAndrew Huberman2:04

      each and every one of us ask, "How fit are we?" With the word fit, of course, being a very broad encompassing word, you know, it could encompass endurance, certainly it does, strength, uh, the ability to run fast even if for short distances. Um, it might even include hypertrophy or directed hypertrophy, trying to balance one's musculature, to offset asymmetries, recover from injuries, et cetera. How should I or anyone else for that matter think about their level of fitness? You know, I know my resting heart rate, but what do I do in terms of really assessing whether or not I'm as fit as I could be and should be, both for sake of health and performance? And here I'm asking you the question not as an athlete but as somebody who's been pretty consistent as an exerciser, but if we were to throw our arms around this question of how do we assess our fitness, what would be, uh, sort of the different levels of assessment that we should think about and do?

   2. AGAndy Galpin3:08

      When it comes to exercise, people generally have two major goals in mind. Goal number one is achieving some sort of appearance, right? This is, uh, "I want to be big," or, "I want to not be too big," or, "I want to be lean." Something, right? It doesn't matter what that goal is, but there is an aesthetic component to almost everybody. They want to look a certain way or not look a certain way. The other one is functionality. So I want to be able to perform a certain way. Now again, that definition differs per person. So I want to be better at strength. I want to be better at mobility. I want to be able to, um, have energy throughout the day. Whatever it is. So there's some sort of appeal to aesthetic, and there's some sort of appeal to functionality. So within both of those categories, we want to be in a position where we can understand, where do I need to go with my exercise training so that I can be as fit and as healthy and a- achieve these goals that I want now as well as be in a position to where I can maintain them for a long period of time? So this blends both immediate goals, so say you're just interested in squatting a lot of weight. Say you're interested in running a 5K time the best you want. It doesn't matter. It blends that with the abil- the, the desire to have a long wellness span, to be fit throughout life, to achieve all those things for as long as possible. So then, then the question kind of comes back to saying, "Well, how do I know which area I need to focus on the most, and why am I not achieving these goals, or how can I get there more effectively?" And if we look at the big picture, we have to understand that there are several major components to physical fitness that are going to be required in all of these categories. And to achieve that, there are a handful of components that have to happen to be able to hit those goals. Now, there are infinite methods, so the saying we actually use here a lot is, "The methods are many, but the concepts are few." So what I'd love to do today is, over the course of our discussion is, hit exactly what those concepts are and then cover a whole bunch of different methods, and w- we could do that for hours. But we'll cover a number of them for various goals.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman5:06

      So one of the reasons I went into neuroscience and not into exercise science is because of this thing neuroplasticity, the nervous system's ability to adapt. But the more time I spend with you and the more I learn from you, I realize that many if not all of the organ systems of our body have this incredible ability to adapt, and when we're talking about physical exercise, there are incredible adaptations that, of course, involve the nervous system but also involve muscle and connective tissue and so many other cell types and tissues. That said,

3. 5:40 – 10:56

   9 Exercise-Induced Adaptations

   1. AHAndrew Huberman5:40

      when we talk about fitness, what are the major types of adaptations that underlie this thing that we call fitness? And later, I know we're going to get into how different forms of exercise can trigger different types of adaptations, but what are the major adaptations that one can create in their body?... using exercise?

   2. AGAndy Galpin6:02

      Ther- there are many reasons why one should exercise, and we could perhaps cover that later in our chats. But the physiological adaptations can be bucketed really into nine areas. So the very first one is what I call skill or technique, so just learning to move better, more efficiently, with a specific position and timing and sequence, or whatever that is. This could be running more effectively. This could be practicing a skill like shooting a- a ball or an implement, swinging a golf club. Anything like that, I call that skill development. The second one is speed. This is simply moving at a higher velocity or with a better rate of acceleration. Okay? Um, that's very similar to the next one, which is power, and power is speed multiplied by force. Um, the next one then, of course, on top of that is force or strength. So, th- those are really synonymous terms, right? Uh, how effectively can you move something? Now, this is often confused, strength, rather, uh, as muscular endurance. So what I mean by that is strength truly is a marker of how, what's the maximum thing you can move or it's the maximum amount of force you can produce one time. It's not how many repetitions in a row you can do. That's actually another one of our adaptations called muscular endurance. All right? So that is typically under the order of, like, say, 5 to 25, maybe 50 repetitions. Think of a classic, how many push-ups can you do in a row? How many sit-ups can you do in a minute? Like, things like that are muscular endurance. Muscular endurance tends to be localized. So this is, you know, specific to just, say, your triceps and your- and your deltoids. It's not a overall cardiovascular endurance marker or anything like that. So that's strength, number four. Number five is muscle hypertrophy, and this is the first time now we're talking about, uh, an appearance rather than a functional outcome. So, you know, moving better, moving faster, moving heavier are, uh, indicators of how well you can move. This is the first one that's just simply how big is your muscle, and that's muscle hypertrophy or muscle size. After that is muscular endurance. So this is how many repetitions you can typically do of a movement. So think of how many push-ups in a row you can do, uh, how many sit-ups in a minute you can do. Things that are typically in, like, 5 to 50 repetition sort of range, and it is often, or it is almost always local muscle. So what I mean by that is, uh, it is... I don't... A push-up test is- is really how many reps that your triceps and pecs and- and deltoids can do. It is not a cardiovascular endurance. It is not a global physiological endurance. It's specific to typically one or a few muscle groups at a time. And this is why you have to do multiple tests for- for sort of every group there. Uh, after that, now we've moved into number seven, which is what I call anaerobic capacity. This is more synonymous with maximum heart rate, and now we're actually looking at, rather than a single movement or muscle group, it is a total physiological, um, limitation. So it is, uh, the maximum amount of work you can do in, say, 30 to 45 seconds, maybe even up to 120 seconds of all-out work. Um, think of your classic interval type of stuff here. So how much work can you do, uh, at a maximum rate where you're gonna enter tremendous amounts of global fatigue? The next past that is maximal aerobic capacity, and this is probably something like in the 8 to 15 minute range, where you're going to reach probably both a maximum heart rate as well as a true VO2 max, which we'll- w- we'll talk a lot more about what that is, uh, later. So that is- is, uh, different from the previous one where it- you can't reach this in a matter of seconds. It simply takes multiple minutes to get to a position to where your VO2 max is actually going to be, uh, sufficiently challenged or an indicator there. And then the last one, number nine, is what I call long duration, and this is just your ability to sustain submaximal work for a long period of time with no breaks, no reduction whatsoever. This is often called steady state training, or a lot of people just think of this when they think of, quote-unquote, "cardio." But your ability to continue movement without any breaks or change or drop, uh, is the last and final adaptation.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman10:15

      And for long distance steady state, um, I'm guessing it exceeds 15 minutes, uh, because-

   4. AGAndy Galpin10:21

      Correct.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman10:21

      ... uh, m- uh, the previous one was 8 to 15 minutes or so. Um, w- what sort of, uh, s- ra- time ranges are we talking about in terms of this, uh, long duration?

   6. AGAndy Galpin10:30

      Well, that's actually wonderful. You're gonna be anything past 15 minutes. So really, if you look at a- a kind of a minimal number there, it's generally 20 minutes of what we're looking for, but a- a more typical would be 20 to 60 minutes. But anything past that would still be limited by your long duration endurance, so your ability to sustain work over time.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman10:48

      Okay, so given that there are nine different major adaptations that can be induced with exercise of specific types,

4. 10:56 – 13:33

   Assessing Fitness Levels per Category; Fat Loss & Health

   1. AHAndrew Huberman10:56

      is there any one global test or assessment that people can take or do that allows them to determine what level of ability, of fitness they have in each and every one of these nine different categories?

   2. AGAndy Galpin11:11

      There are probably dozens or more tests that you can do for each one of those nine categories, and what I would actually like to do is walk you through my favorites for each and giving you both the scientific gold standards. So if you had the ability, unlimited resources, what should you go do? As well as some that are- are equipment-free, that are cost-free, things that anyone can do across the world. In addition to that, I wanna walk you through what those numbers should be. W- how do you identify if you're really poor in something or if you're great? And then if you aren't as good maybe in a category and you want to get better at it, exactly what to do in terms of protocols, uh, for how to achieve optimal results in each of those steps.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman11:49

      So I noticed in your list of the nine different adaptations to exercise that you did not mention fat loss or health promoting benefits, which are two reasons that a lot of people exercise.Was there a specific reason that you did not mention those?

   4. AGAndy Galpin12:03

      Absolutely. It's because those things are actually not specific training styles. They are byproducts of these nine. So what I mean by that is, if you understand how fat loss occurs, which we can certainly talk about, you'll realize some of these nine protocols are effective for fat loss and some are not. Uh, general health is the same thing. When we understand what it actually means to be healthy from a physiological perspective, then the rationale for what to train for is going to determine itself. So, what I mean is, looking at things like, in order to be healthy, you have to have sufficient strength, you have to have cardiovascular fitness, and you have to have sufficient muscle, and et cetera. Therefore, training for one's health is determined by those restrictions. So for you, Andrew, you may need to do more strength training to be healthy. Where me, because I'm strong already, way stronger than you, I may not need to do as much strength training. So our, quote unquote, "health based protocols" are based on our current status or limitations in physical fitness among these nine areas. So what I would like to do today is to cover a brief history of exercise science, and the reason is, it's going to explain a lot about why people are not getting the goals in their exercise programs that they want, as well as gives you very specific direction about what to do instead.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman13:27

      I can't wait to hear all the things that I'm doing incorrectly, and to have you help me remedy that.

5. 13:33 – 17:20

   Momentous, LMNT, Eight Sleep

   1. AHAndrew Huberman13:33

      Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is also separate from Dr. Galpin's teaching and research roles at Cal State Fullerton. It is, however, part of our desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, we'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Momentous. Momentous makes supplements of the absolute highest quality. The Huberman Lab Podcast is proud to be partnering with Momentous for several important reasons. First of all, as I mentioned, their supplements are of extremely high quality. Second of all, their supplements are generally in single ingredient formulations. If you're going to develop a supplementation protocol, you're going to want to focus mainly on using single ingredient formulations. With single ingredient formulations, you can devise the most logical and effective and cost-effective supplementation regimen for your goals. In addition, Momentous supplements ship internationally, and this is, of course, important because we realize that many of the Huberman Lab Podcast listeners reside outside the United States. If you'd like to try the various supplements mentioned on the Huberman Lab Podcast, in particular, supplements for hormone health, for sleep optimization, for focus, as well as a number of other things including exercise recovery, you can go to Live Momentous, spelled O-U-S, so that's livemomentous.com/huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by LMNT. LMNT is an electrolyte drink that contains the exact ratios of the electrolytes sodium, magnesium, and potassium to optimize cellular functioning for mental and physical performance. Most people realize that hydration is key. We need to ingest enough fluids in order to feel our best and perform our best, but what most people do not realize is that the proper functioning of our cells and nerve cells, neurons in particular, requires that sodium, magnesium, and potassium be present in the correct ratios. Now, of course, people with pre-hypertension and hypertension need to be careful about their sodium intake, but what a lot of people don't realize is that if you drink caffeine, if you exercise, and in particular, if you're following a very clean diet, that is not a lot of processed foods, which of course is a good thing, chances are, you're not getting enough sodium, potassium, and magnesium to optimize mental and physical performance. LMNT contains a science-backed ratio of 1,000 milligrams, that's one gram of sodium, 200 milligrams of potassium, and 60 milligrams of magnesium, and no sugar. If you'd like to try LMNT, you can go to Drink LMNT, that's lmnt.com/huberman to get a free LMNT sample pack with your purchase. Again, that's Drink LMNT, lmnt.com/huberman to claim a free sample pack. Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. I've been using an Eight Sleep mattress cover for about the last eight months, and it has completely transformed my sleep. I'm sleeping about the same amount, but I'm sleeping far deeper and I'm now getting the proper ratios of so-called rapid eye movement, or REM sleep, and slow wave sleep, and waking up feeling far more recovered mentally and physically. The underlying mechanism for all that is very straightforward. I've talked many times before on this podcast and elsewhere about the critical relationship between sleep and body temperature. That is, in order to fall asleep at night, your body needs to drop by about one to three degrees in terms of core body temperature, and waking up involves a one to three degree increase in core body temperature. With Eight Sleep mattress covers, you can adjust the temperature of your sleeping environment to be one temperature at the start of the night, a different temperature the middle of the night, and a different temperature as you approach morning, each of which can place you into the optimal stages of sleep and have you waking up feeling more refreshed than ever. If you'd like to try Eight Sleep, you can go to eightsleep.com/huberman and check out their Pod 3 cover and save $150 at checkout. Eight Sleep currently ships in the USA, Canada, United Kingdom, select countries in the EU, and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com/huberman to save $150 at checkout.

6. 17:20 – 26:10

   Lifetime Endurance Training: VO2 Max & Other Health Metrics

   1. AHAndrew Huberman17:20

      Before we get into how the history of exercise science informs the mistakes that we are all making and how to remedy those mistakes, I'm curious as to whether or not you have any favorite one or two studies that point to a sort of naturally occurring, uh, example of how people can become very fit in one area and not another. You know, I'm familiar with seeing endurance athletes that apparently have terrific endurance, but at least to my eye, don't look like they are particularly strong. I'm also familiar with seeing individuals that are very, very strong, particularly on social media (laughs) , but that don't look like they could walk up a flight of stairs, much less run a mile. Do you have any examples of studies in or outside the laboratory that point to that in a concrete way?

   2. AGAndy Galpin18:05

      There's a lot to hap- to discuss here, but I'll, I'll answer it really clear, uh, if you look across the literature, and this is actually back to as early as the mid-1950s. In fact, it actually goes back to previous to that, to the Harvard Fatigue Lab, 1927 to 1947 area, uh, people actually were advocating at that point a combination of strength training and endurance exercise.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman18:26

      In the 1920s?

   4. AGAndy Galpin18:27

      Way back then. In fact, it actually goes prior to that, in the late 1880s. There's scientific evidence back then. Um, it became more well-developed, uh, in the mid-1950s and '60s. In fact, there was, um, the initial stages of what's called the exercise is medicine movement, which is the movement now, but the initial stages of that actually root back to the 1950s. And I could actually go into that whole discussion and, and the story of, uh, how that all came about. But that's the health is wealth, um, mantra. That came from the 1950s, um, from the scientific community then. All those, those data points are going to suggest you need a combination of some sort of broad strength training and broad endurance. Th- now if you have a specific goal five months from now, you wanna compete in a race or hit a, uh, a certain physique thing, that's fine to focus on one area of training. Certainly if you're an athlete, that's different. But if you want to maximize health and, and overall functionality throughout time, it needs to be a combination. And to really, really highlight this, I can actually talk about a couple of studies that I've done. Um, one of them we actually did in Stockholm, Sweden. So I did this at the Karolinska Institutet, which you probably are aware of. Um, it's actually one of the founding places of all of exercise physiology. Uh, generally it started there. It was called something different back then, but, um, really, uh, our entire field came out of Stockholm and the Karolinska Institutet. And we worked with a whole bunch of cross country skiers, uh, that were in their 80s and 90s, and so they were competitive skiers in the 1940s and '50s and they had been skiing competitively for that entire duration. So you're talking 50 to 60 consecutive years of competing. Um, so these are 80 to 90 year olds living alone and healthy, and we compared them to a group of individuals, uh, here in America who were the same age but were not exercising. And what we wanted to do is to see and, and kind of look at what do these lifelong endurance individuals, what do they look like? Well, when we brought them into the lab, which is, by the way, amazing, to do a VO2 max test on a 92 year old, um, especially in a language that they don't speak. Uh, you're in a, you can imagine, you're doing this in the hospital, right? And you're running people through, this is a cycling test, and so for a, a VO2 max test you have a mask on your face, you're hooked up to a metabolic cart so we can collect all the gases that are coming out of your mouth, and you're, you're chanting these people on, and basically every minute the workload gets harder and harder and harder until you can't complete it. And we're doing this in a, in a (laughs) cardiology center and, and the cardiologists are usually waiting for their heart rate to get, like, slightly elevated and then they stop them 'cause they're, you know, 85, 86 years old! And not only are we not stopping them but we are screaming (laughs) in their ears just like, "Go, go, go!" And, and-

   5. AHAndrew Huberman20:59

      In Swedish or English?

   6. AGAndy Galpin21:00

      In, in English, right? And then the, the translator, but it doesn't take a lot of translation when someone's screaming at your face like, "Go, go, go." Um, so we ran them through a whole bunch of VO2 max tests and we did the same thing for those folks back, um, here, here in America. And what was, um, incredibly clear from that study was the VO2 max, um, you can think about these numbers, and this is what's called relative. So, and the relative terms are, uh, milliliters per kilogram per minute. And so a standard number is about 18, is what we call the line of independence. So if your VO2 max is below 18 milliliters per kilogram per minute, it's very hard for you to live by yourself. So your fitness is so low, you probably are going to need to have somebody living with you or you'll need to be in some sort of assisted living home. So if you are in, like, the VO2 max of 20 or 21 or 22, you're not below that line of independence but you're on that threshold. And so what we found was, our folks here in America, the group average was right around that number. So they were living at home by definition. We picked them to be people living by themselves in their 80s and not in a living room. But they didn't have any bandwidth, so if they got a cold or they had anything pop up where they lost a little bit of fitness, they were gonna drop below that line and would probably have to go to some sort of assisted living situation. Um, the folks in Stockholm, the, the cross country skiers, the group average was most closer to, like, 35 to 38 milliliters per kilogram per minute. Now that number is about the VO2 max you would find for a normal college male. And so these folks that were literally 80 or 90, um, if the, you know, the joke, if a saber-toothed tiger ran in the room or, or whatever and it chased it down and we all had to run, uh, to see who didn't get eaten alive, the, the college men would probably have gotten eaten before the, the 90 year olds. Uh, and in one case we had a 92 year old individual and I think his VO2 max was 38, which was, uh, in our estimation a world record. The highest VO2 max for somebody over the age of 90.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman22:56

      May, may I ask, what, what is the typical resting heart rate for somebody, uh, very fit like these, um, uh, older Swedish cross country skiers? Like, if somebody has a, um, this, let's say their number is 35 milliliters per kilogram in this, uh, VO2 max test, but since most of us don't have access-

   8. AGAndy Galpin23:16

      Yeah.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman23:16

      ... to that kind of equipment, but that we can measure our pulse rate-

   10. AGAndy Galpin23:19

       Yep.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman23:20

       ... um, w- what was a typical resting heart rate, resting pulse rate?

   12. AGAndy Galpin23:23

       S- sub 60.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman23:24

       Sub 60?

   14. AGAndy Galpin23:25

       Yeah. I mean, uh, typically that's a good number to go off of for anybody regardless of age. Um, i- anytime I see somebody above that, I'm, I'm gonna start asking questions. Certainly above... now you'll see in the literature people will say 60 to 80 is normal, and I, I don't agree with that at all. I- if you're up, if your resting heart rate is 75 beats per minute, there's either something going on or you're not fit.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman23:46

       How much cross country skiing were they doing on average in the previous, let's say, if we take the previous 20 years since they'd been long time cross country skiers, divide that by 20 years.

   16. AGAndy Galpin23:57

       Yeah.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman23:57

       Uh, on average are, are these people cross country skiing five hours a day, two hours a day, an hour a day?

   18. AGAndy Galpin24:02

       Yeah, that's actually a good question. I don't remember. It's been many years, um, but they were not doing it every single day in that the volume would not have shocked you. It was the consistency over 50 years.... that got them there. Now, obviously, these people were, again, world champions and Olympic gold medalists in the 1940s and '50s, so they were elite. They just continued consistently over time. But it wasn't a, a, a shocking amount of physical fitness. They also didn't go out of their way to train hard. They were busy chopping wood, they were busy doing number of other things, and then they just happened to do some of these races and ski a long way. But it wasn't a, a crazy amount to where you're like, "Oh, that's great, but I could never hit that number." It was something much more reasonable.

   19. AHAndrew Huberman24:43

       So is the takeaway to be consistent about getting cardiovascular exercise? And we can define-

   20. AGAndy Galpin24:49

       Yeah.

   21. AHAndrew Huberman24:49

       ... what consistent means in terms of days per week a little bit later, and I, I know we will.

   22. AGAndy Galpin24:53

       Yeah.

   23. AHAndrew Huberman24:53

       Uh, what are some other examples? I love these examples of, um, from the real world.

   24. AGAndy Galpin24:58

       So here, here's the downside though. So I only told you about their VO2 max. What I didn't tell you about is their leg strength and functionality. And that part was no more superior than it was their counterparts who were not exercisers. So what that showed really, really clearly, and many other studies have been done since then that look at the classic what we call lifelong endurance exercisers, you will see, in general, their VO2 max, their cardiovascular function, their resting heart rate, their blood pressure, it will be, uh, markedly healthier than folks who don't exercise. It is extraordinarily clear that type of exercise is very important for chronic disease management. No doubt about it. However, it is not sufficient for overall global health because it does almost nothing for leg strength, for any other marker of health, which we can talk about what are the things that are actually going to predict mortality, uh, morbidity the most. So that was a, a big, a big smashing indication that's like, "Hey, this is great." However, you're leaving things on the table for your overall health. Now, one could argue they're 80 and they, they're doing pretty well, but they weren't doing as well in these areas. And

7. 26:10 – 33:49

   Genetics vs. Lifestyle, Endurance Training & Identical Twins

   1. AGAndy Galpin26:10

      so a study we did later, actually, as a follow-up was looking at monozygous twins. So this is actually interesting being a scientist. This is a classic example of one of my graduate students who had been in my lab for probably three or four years, and she was in our single fiber physiology lab, and she's... now, you imagine, she's in- she's isolating individual muscle fibers from an athlete one by one with a tweezer, and she's going to do several thousand individual cells, right? So she's, you're down there for hours and, and things happen down there. You kind of lose your mind. And, and she was just kind of going on one day with one of my colleagues and just talking, and she's like, "Oh, yeah, my uncle is really, really fit," and something or other. And then, "Oh, yeah, he's a twin." And I was like, "Oh, so monozygous?" And she's like, "Yeah."

   2. AHAndrew Huberman26:54

      For those that don't know, monozygous are identical twins.

   3. AGAndy Galpin26:56

      Yeah, which is interesting. So you basically have... what I'm setting up here is, is this the perfect exercise scientific experiment. Monozygous, identical twins mean y- w- e- th- they have the exact same DNA. So an egg was fertilized, split, and then two humans grew out of that with the exact same DNA. And so now we can start answering the question, well, yeah, okay, what about maybe these cross-country skiers? Maybe they were just genetic freaks. Maybe it didn't matter. It's like some people have... well, genetics are always a component to it, but how much? Well, now we have a scenario lining up where it's like, wait a minute, you have monozygous twins. So we have a replica of a human being, exact same DNA. The only differences that we would see in their physiology now would be due to lifestyle circumstances. Interesting. So monozygous twin, uh, uh, a dad and uncle, right? Uh-huh. Great. Do they exercise? Well, one of them does. He's a lifelong endurance exercise, runner, cyclist, swimmer, iron man, all these things. What about the other one? Nope, he doesn't exercise at all. And at that point, like, I wanted to kill my graduate student, because I'm like, "You've been in my lab for three years, or more probably, and you've never told me that in your household is the perfect scientific experiment for exercise you could ever create." And, like, she's just... the, the, the look on her face when my colleague and I were staring at her, she's just like, "Oh, my God." So I'm like, "Call them right now. They are coming in the lab. We'll fly them in from Chicago. I don't care what we have to do. Like, we're getting them in." And so I wanted to... actually, going back to the model that was first developed by the Harvard Fatigue Lab, one thing that's interesting about that committee is they started off with the concept of trying to examine human performance through a holistic lens. And so it was the antithesis of looking at, uh, either organ by organ, so we're going to only look at the cardiovascular system, we're only going to look at skeletal muscle, and then we're saying we're looking at this entire picture. And so that model we wanted to carry through in these twins. And I said, "All right, I want to bring them in the lab, but I'm not just going to look at one system. I want to do everything." So we took stool samples. We took blood. We did vertical jump tests. We did maximum strength tests. We did, uh, MRIs of muscle mass. We did, um, uh, VO2 max tests. We did efficiency stuff. We, we did genetic testing. We did an IQ test. We did psychological battery. We wanted to look at everything to figure out, of these things, what differ between the twins, and if so, the second key question there is by how much? So can I improve my VO2 max? Sure. Everyone knows that. But how much? Can it change by 5%? 80%? Like, where's the number? And so putting some quantification on this was very important. And so again, we had a- another example of a classic endurance only training paradigm compared to a, a non ex- so this is a, a person who's, I think he was a truck driver by vocation, which is... I think, actually, he drove for a potato chip company, which was even funnier. The, the endurance athlete actually was great because like any endurance people, he had a f- he had physical books of all of his training mileage for the last 35 years. And we could j- we just went through them and we calculated the total amount of miles he ran, his averages, his heart rates per time. We had this unbelievable thing, like what races he was in. He had the documentation. He was just totally nuts, right? Like, something that endurance people are, like, shaking their head right now going, "Oh, yeah, I got that too." And everyone else is like-

   4. AHAndrew Huberman30:10

      Endurance folks are pretty nerdy.

   5. AGAndy Galpin30:11

      Yeah, they're super nerdy, right?

   6. AHAndrew Huberman30:13

      Yeah.

   7. AGAndy Galpin30:13

      So it was great because now we could validate a- as c- close as one could...... to actually how much he ran a- and things like that. So they had about a 35-year discord. Um, they both exercised up through high school. About 18, they stopped doing it, and by the time we met them in the lab, they're in their mid-50s. So it was about 35 years of difference. And when we ran them through the testing, if you look at the- the ve- measures that were similar to the Sweden study, it was almost identical. The- the v- the exercising twin was significantly better at things like lipid panel, resting heart rate, blood pressure, VO2 max. Any of those markers, uh, as predicted, were- weren't much better. What was very interesting, though, was the things that were in the middle. First of all, their total amount of muscle mass was almost identical, like to the gram, within the margin of error of a DEXA scan could possibly ever be. The non-exerciser though was a little bit fatter. So the difference in actual body weight was explained almost entirely by body fat, or non-lean tissue really, same sort of deal. So okay, like no one's surprised there that the exerciser was a little bit leaner, even though it didn't change the total amount of muscle mass at all. When we looked at some of the more functional tests, and we looked at things like muscle quality, so this is a metric you can get from an ultrasound. You can kind of think about this as how much fat is inside the tissue, which is sometimes an advantage for an endurance athlete to have a little bit more of in- what are called intramuscular triglycerides because it's a fuel directly in the tissue. But in general, the exercise or the, uh, the muscle quality was not in favor of the exerciser. Um, if you looked at the performance testing and if you looked at strength, it favored the non- the non-exerciser. And so now again we have the same finding we saw in our Sweden study, but in identical twins. And so it really, really highlighted the fact that if you want to move forward with optimal health, simply picking one silo is not gonna get you there.

   8. AHAndrew Huberman32:09

      One silo meaning just running, just cycling.

   9. AGAndy Galpin32:12

      Right.

   10. AHAndrew Huberman32:13

       Does this mean that the twin that did not exercise could jump higher or win an arm wrestling, uh, competition? Not that that's a vital thing to be able to do, but just in terms of measuring strength, you know, so isometric strength. Um, was the non-exercising twin stronger-

   11. AGAndy Galpin32:30

       Yeah.

   12. AHAndrew Huberman32:30

       ... or at least as strong as their exercising twin?

   13. AGAndy Galpin32:33

       Yes, particularly in grip strength. Yep. A- and any of the measures, uh, like the vertical jump, leg extension power, and a number of things, um, they often favored the non-exerciser, which you're still a little bit of a chicken and egg. You don't know if necessarily the endurance training reduced that other twin's strength or it doesn't even really matter per se. I think the highlight of it is can you change some of these metrics of VO2 max? Yeah. Not even close. These things are very responsive regardless of your genetics. Your genetics will give you a starting place very clearly. Um, even the non-exerciser was a pretty healthy guy. So th- they were in a good spot. Mid-50s, doesn't exercise, doesn't really pay attention to his diet at all, and he was in a pretty good shape. However, if you want to actually move progress and move for, uh, high functionality, you have to do something besides just run, right, just distance run. Now, I could say the same thing for strength training. That alone, I- 'cause I don't wanna make this seem like I'm saying endurance exercises, it worked. In both case, in both these studies, those folks were, uh, much better off in metrics that are incredibly important to mortality, how long you're going to live, VO2 max, et cetera. Um, it's just not gonna get there in terms of the strength.

8. 33:49 – 37:12

   Aging, Muscle Fibers & Exercise

   1. AGAndy Galpin33:49

      We took a look at muscle fiber physiology as well, which is very interesting. So what I mean is there's generally two types of muscle fibers, fast twitch and slow twitch. And one of the things that is a hallmark of aging is a selective reduction in fast twitch fibers. And that's because it's difficult to activate them unless you're doing high force activities. Um, you're gonna activate slow twitch fibers doing almost any activity of daily living. And so they stay around. Fast twitch fibers, unless you're doing something of high force, are going not be used, and they're not gonna be kept around. And that's a problem because when you look at things like the need for leg strength through aging, the ability to catch yourself from a fall, um, these things are incredibly important. If you don't have fast twitch fibers, you don't have the speed to get your foot out in front of you on time and you don't have the eccentric strength to stop the fall from happening. And so if you look across, again, the aging literature, they're- they're very clear about the importance of maintaining strength and- and fast twitch fibers over time. So we know that this is an important distinction here overall. And people will often talk about, "Okay, how much of that, um, is genetically determined? Can I change my fiber type?" And the answer there is- is resoundingly yes. And can I change it with exercise? And the answer is absolutely you can. And the next question is, how much? So now, again, we're gonna see an order of magnitude. In general, without going too far down, uh, an area that maybe we could save for- for later, um, each one of your muscles in your body has a different percentage of fast twitch and slow twitch. For example, your calf. Um, if you look at your soleus, which is kind of the smaller one that goes in the back, that's generally mostly slow twitch. Typically 80% or so slow twitch. Um, the gastroc, which is the other one right next to it, so if you were to point your toe next to your face and that part that kind of flexes out in the middle, pops out, that's your gastroc. That is almost the inverse. So it's generally 80% fast twitch, maybe 20% slow twitch. Um, generally anything anti-postural or postural rather, anti-gravity, uh, spinal erectors, things that are meant to keep you up or moving all day are going to be slow twitch. And things like your hamstrings, which are for explosion, are gonna be fast twitch. Well, we biopsied the quad in these individuals. And in that muscle, it's generally about 50-50 fast twitch, slow twitch as a- as a really broad number. Well, one of the things that we found was in the non-exerciser, it was almost textbook what you would predict. It was about 50% or so slow twitch, a little bit of percentage of fast twitch, and then about 20% of what are these called hybrid fibers, which are a hallmark of inactivity. All right. Great. In the exerciser, it was about 95% slow twitch.And so it's extremely clear, again, I don't know if maybe their set point was a little bit higher towards that and the non-exerciser d- you know, devolved down to his place, or the other one, but it doesn't matter. I mean, you're going from 40% slow twitch in one case to 95% slow twitch in another case. It shows you that the- the- the limits of physiological adaptation are darn near boundless given enough exposure, and in this case, 35 years of extremely consistent training, and his muscle morphology was completely different than his identical twin with the exact same DNA.

   2. AHAndrew Huberman37:01

      Those are two beautiful examples of people doing endurance work for a number of years and what that gives them, in terms of benefits and functionality.

9. 37:12 – 39:58

   Lifetime Strength Training & Outcomes

   1. AHAndrew Huberman37:12

      Has the opposite experiment been done or observed where somebody just weight lifted or just sprinted for a number of years? Uh, I don't know that there's a identical twin, uh, control.

   2. AGAndy Galpin37:25

      No.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman37:25

      That's a little t- too-

   4. AGAndy Galpin37:25

      I wish we had a third twin. (laughs)

   5. AHAndrew Huberman37:26

      T- too much to ask for, right? Triplets. Okay, so triplets out there, um, if you're exercising in different ways, or people who have triplets, maybe you assign one kid to be a runner-

   6. AGAndy Galpin37:35

      Ah.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman37:35

      ... one kid to be a weight lifter, and the other one to be sedentary.

   8. AGAndy Galpin37:37

      Yeah.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman37:37

      Please don't do experiments like that. But the expectation, as I understand it, would be that the person that sprints or d- that does heavy squats, explosive work, would then have more fast twitch muscle fibers in their quad and their non-exercising counterpart would have fewer. That- that would make sense. But what happens if you assess the end- the endurance level in somebody who's just done strength training or just sprinted?

   10. AGAndy Galpin38:07

       Yeah, so we don't have those data specifically. There's- we're actually just starting to have studies come out on lifelong strength trainers. And there's actually a very good reason for this, um, which is a whole story we can get into, but the- the quick answer is, we don't have a lot of people who've been lifting weights for 30 or plus years. We have a whole swath of people who've been doing endurance training for that long.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman38:32

       Is that because fewer people have been weight training or are the weight trainers all dead?

   12. AGAndy Galpin38:36

       Y- you gotta go back to the 1953, 1954. You had two major things happen that changed the entire course of exercise physiology and exercise science, and really exercise as we know it. It's important to understand the history of our field. A lot of the questions I get are f- based on false assumptions of what exercise can and can't do. As an example, we- uh, questions like momentum. Should I use momentum? Or- or that's cheating, right? Or it doesn't work. Uh, it compromises my results. It's actually totally untrue. There are excellent reasons when you should use momentum when you lift. There are reasons when you should not. It is sometimes very beneficial to go fast with your exercise repetitions. Sometimes very slow and controlled is better. Any question I get, in fact, I'm very infamous for always responding with, "It depends." The reason I say it depends is, it depends on the goal. When you're training for speed or power or muscular endurance, the answer to some of these very common question differs. What people fail to realize is they think they're asking the right question because they don't understand this history, what's being planted in your brain subconsciously is driving that question, and it's not necessarily the right one. So if we walk through that a little bit, you'll see what that field has led to, why you think certain things matter when they actually don't, or maybe your assumptions aren't correct, and then exactly what to do about

10. 39:58 – 40:51

    AG1 (Athletic Greens)

    1. AGAndy Galpin39:58

       them.

    2. AHAndrew Huberman39:58

       I'd like to take a brief break and acknowledge our sponsor, Athletic Greens. Athletic Greens is a vitamin mineral probiotic and adaptogen drink designed to help you meet all of your foundational nutritional needs. I've been taking Athletic Greens daily since 2012, so I'm delighted that they're a sponsor of this podcast. The reason I started taking Athletic Greens and the reason I still take Athletic Greens once or twice a day is that it helps me meet all of my foundational nutritional needs. That is, it covers my vitamins, my minerals, and the probiotics are especially important to me. Athletic Greens also contains adaptogens, which are critical for recovering from stress, from exercise, from work, or just general life. If you'd like to try Athletic Greens, you can go to athleticgreens.com/huberman to claim a special offer. They'll give you five free travel packs and they'll give you a year supply of vitamin D3 K2. Again, if you'd like to try Athletic Greens, go to athleticgreens.com/huberman to claim the special offer.

11. 40:51 – 51:26

    Exercise Physiology History; Strength Training Popularity

    1. AGAndy Galpin40:51

       So in 1953, 1954, you had Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute mile, so sub four-minute mile, and then you also had Sir Edmund Hillary and then his sherpa, Norgay, uh, summit Everest in the same basically two-year span. That exact same year after that was the formation of what's called the American College of Sports Medicine. Now, that is still around today. It is the preeminent group for this exercise as medicine. So if you're interested in things like exercise for obesity prevention, for cancer treatment, for- for things like that, it's not really sports medicine. It's more for c- clinical exercise. That's the place to go, American College of Sports Medicine. So we have this launching of both a ton of people wanting to start doing endurance exercise and start swimming and cycling and running and then you have a launch of people coming off of the back of the Harvard Fatigue Lab. So the fatigue lab actually shut down in 1947. So you have these people interested in physical fitness, but nowhere to go. Well, all those people left the Harvard Fatigue Lab and started their own labs at other places. So you've launched the careers of people like, um, Dave Costill and, and, and John Lazi and some of these very famous exercise physiologists, and they start building laboratories. Then we start, for the first time ever, studying the science of exercise. So years go by and these people happen. The 1960s and 1970s is what we call the runner's boom. So people start the- if you, in fact, if you look at the numbers of people who were doing marathons, it explodes through these two decade spans, right? Because it's im- a- like the- we could do these endurance feats. Notice both of those feats were endurance, right? Running short term as well as going over there. No one has thought anything about strength training.... and here's why. In the late 1880s, there was a very famous, uh, physician named, uh, George Winship, I think was his name, who was a big proponent of strength training. Well, he died at, like, in the age of 50-something of a heart attack, and that terrified people of strength training for 70 years because they're like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. That stuff will kill you." 'Cause he was a doctor. He was trying... He was running around the country, doing these exhibitions and purporting it, and then he died.

    2. AHAndrew Huberman42:52

       It's sort of like Atkins...

    3. AGAndy Galpin42:54

       100%.

    4. AHAndrew Huberman42:54

       ... dying, although some people say he died of a heart attack. Other people said he fell through the ice into cold water. That's debated. But the fact that a, a heavy proponent of...

    5. AGAndy Galpin43:04

       Correct.

    6. AHAndrew Huberman43:04

       ... a given nutrition plan dies suddenly-

    7. AGAndy Galpin43:07

       Yep.

    8. AHAndrew Huberman43:08

       ... not good for business.

    9. AGAndy Galpin43:09

       So now the little storm is brewing. 1940s, and I'm going back a little bit but bear with me for a second, there's a guy named, um, Peter Karpovich and he's a, a, a scientist out of Springfield. Like, the decorated physical education PE, like that's a legendary place, Springfield College, and he is anti-strength training for a lot of the same reasons. In his entire career, he talked about don't do this. He's the one that launched these ideas that strength training will make you lose flexibility, it will be bad for kids. Like, all these things that we know now are clearly not true. He's proponent of these things. And there's a show that happened, um, in his... at Springfield College and a guy named Bob York, and if you... York Barbell-

    10. AHAndrew Huberman43:52

        Mm-hmm.

    11. AGAndy Galpin43:52

        ... that's still around today, is going around the country and, and putting on these exhibitions. They come to Springfield and it's sort of like a, a new aged, um, like social media thing where it's like the students know what's about to happen 'cause Karpovich shows up to this event and everyone knows he hates strength training and everyone is like waiting for it to end just to see what he's gonna say. So this whole exhibition goes on and these people are doing... Now you gotta remember back in the time like bodybuilding, weightlifting, power lifting, strength, strongman, it's like all the same thing. There's no differentiation yet. And it finishes and Karpovich stands up and like the crowd goes silent and he just asks one question and he just points to one of the guys and says, "Scratch your back." And now he's just assuming and waiting for the guy to be like, "Ah," and not be able to put his hand behind his head. And I think he pointed to John Gimik, who's like a famous bodybuilder, and he reached back and scratched his back no problem, and then they proceeded to grab two dumbbells, I think they were 50-pound dumbbells, and do a back flip, standing back flip with both in each hand. They start doing the splits on stage and they start going... performing all kinds of physical function tests and, and Karpovich is stunned. He's like, "Holy shit." He has nothing to say. He leaves there and his whole life has changed. All these things he was claiming were shown in his face to be false. He does a 180 on his career. He starts running study after study on strength training and starts finding immediately there are no detriments to strength training in terms of like global health, right? Of course you can do it wrong and things like that. And in fact here comes a whole bunch of benefits. So through the 1950s, while this thing's going on with the endurance folks, no one's still strength training because there's no, there's no record to see. There's no American College of Sports Medicine. There's no societies. There's no science. We're not sure it's safe. And meanwhile, Karpovich is just hammering study after study after study showing you it's safe, it's safe, it's safe, but it hasn't picked up yet. And then everything changed in 1977. Thank you Arnold Schwarzenegger. He came out with the trifold. He hits you with Pumping Iron, which I know you know that movie, right? Pumping Iron?

    12. AHAndrew Huberman45:50

        It's an interesting movie even for those not interested in bodybuilding. It's a very interesting movie because it really gives a window into not just him, but the way in which weight training started to show up as a regular practice. You know?

    13. AGAndy Galpin46:05

        Totally.

    14. AHAndrew Huberman46:05

        When I was growing up, the only people who weight trained were people preparing for football.

    15. AGAndy Galpin46:09

        Mm-hmm.

    16. AHAndrew Huberman46:09

        Bodybuilders who basically didn't exist in the town where I grew up. And the only people who did yoga were like yogis doing Bikram.

    17. AGAndy Galpin46:16

        Right.

    18. AHAndrew Huberman46:17

        But now you drive through any major American city or European city and there is yoga studios, there's gyms with free weights.

    19. AGAndy Galpin46:24

        Yep.

    20. AHAndrew Huberman46:26

        Arnold Schwarzenegger is largely responsible, I think for i- for initiating that, that shift.

    21. AGAndy Galpin46:32

        Yep. He... 'Cause he hit... Think about it. He hit us with Pumping Iron, Conan, and then The Terminator, almost in back to back... Like, very close within years. So you've got this whole cascade of the '70s of people running, cycling, and swimming. Now science is starting to come out that it's not dangerous and maybe actually some benefit, and then boom. Not only is it not bad for you, it can make you into a real world superhero. I mean, think about the psychology of a, of a child growing up watching somebody like Conan. Uh, uh, think about what Batman looked like in the 1950s and '60s, right? And then boom. "I can look like that?" Now, not everyone wants to look like Arnold, but you see the... Like, you see the power that can land in people. No one had ever seen or thought you can make your body transform like that. You could maybe be born like that, but no chance that's within the grasp of all of you.

    22. AHAndrew Huberman47:22

        When I was a kid growing up, one of my favorite books was the Guinness Book of Worlds Records.

    23. AGAndy Galpin47:26

        Yeah.

    24. AHAndrew Huberman47:26

        I live... Still have images in my mind of the, the, uh, coldest animal, you know, the-

    25. AGAndy Galpin47:31

        Uh, sure.

    26. AHAndrew Huberman47:32

        ... the longest lifespan, et cetera.

    27. AGAndy Galpin47:34

        Sure.

    28. AHAndrew Huberman47:34

        You know? And there was a picture in there of Arnold Schwarzenegger, and you know what his record was? It said perfectly developed man. (laughs)

    29. AGAndy Galpin47:42

        Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

    30. AHAndrew Huberman47:42

        Which is, as you point out, that isn't the physique that most people aspire to.
12. 51:26 – 57:22

    Bodybuilding & Misconceptions; Circuit/Group Training

    1. AGAndy Galpin51:26

       everything swings now from an exercise perspective into bodybuilding. And so almost all of the things, in fact, we were sort of talking before, I could run a whole bunch of tricks on you, and I could ask you a whole bunch of questions about things that you think are absolute standards or guaranteeds about training. "I'm supposed to do this. I'm never supposed to do that."

    2. AHAndrew Huberman51:45

       For instance?

    3. AGAndy Galpin51:46

       Uh, for instance, is it okay to train a muscle group on back-to-back days? Most people are at home thinking, "No, you're not supposed to train a muscle group."

    4. AHAndrew Huberman51:54

       It needs to recover.

    5. AGAndy Galpin51:55

       And that's total nonsense, right? Um, other things like body part split training, right? Training one muscle group per day. Um, other things like cardio, uh, endurance training influencing, will it ruin my gains from my lift? All of these things are on, at a, a base of assumptions that come from bodybuilding. Now, that's a fantastic world, but because everything started in the late 1970s as bodybuilding in terms of basically strength training was that. Weightlifting and power lifting were not at all around, right? They were, but nobody cared. Again, show me someone who wants to be strong, I'll show you 10 who want to look strong. The physique thing just dominated, and we're s- we're not getting out of that yet. Uh, we're not out, all the way out of it. We're starting to, though, because here's why. People started to realize this, this bodybuilding thing is fantastic. I can change my physique. I'm getting better. But damn, these workouts take an hour and a half, two hours, and I'm gonna spend that whole time on one or two body parts, which means I'm gonna have to lift six days a week, and I'm gonna have to do that consistently, right? Now all of a sudden, boom, two hours on my, on my elbow flexors. Damn, my elbow's starting to hurt.

    6. AHAndrew Huberman53:05

       And yet my understanding is that it doesn't really require two hours a day-

    7. AGAndy Galpin53:10

       Not at all.

    8. AHAndrew Huberman53:10

       ... of training in order to get benefits, even just for hypertrophy.

    9. AGAndy Galpin53:13

       Totally. But, but a, a lot of the times you're gonna have to get some amount of time in because you're spending so much isolation. So we've gone away from training movement. Running is a movement. Cycling is a movement. Um, training my biceps is a muscle or mu- muscle group. Um, training my hamstrings are a muscle group. That's not a human movement. So we've done a 180 in terms of selecting the exercises from movement-based prescription to now muscle group based training. So when you're isolating muscle groups, that means a whole chunk of your body is really not doing much throughout the day. So what happens if you're doing, say, legs on Monday and you miss Monday 'cause you're on a flight? Now your legs have to wait a whole nother week, right? That's, there's solutions to that, but so this starts to become problematic. People start getting beat up. People start realizing, "I actually don't feel that great. I'm not super fit. I'm sweating just walking up the stairs. I'm out of breath." Why? Because all that training, you've done nothing for your cardiovascular fitness. You've done nothing to improve, um, heart rate, oxygenation, blood flow. And so that paradigm swing way too hard into the exercising, especially lifting weights, is single joint, often machine, often slow, often high volume isolation stuff. And that left a giant opening of people going, "Well, wait a minute. What if you could get in the gym, I could promise you the same or better results in under 30 minutes? And in fact, you'll also feel better. You'll lose more weight." And that opened up group exercise classes, kettlebell stuff, CrossFit type of stuff, circuit training, because you can come in.You won't get so beat up 'cause the volume's lower. The time is much lower, you get multiple adaptations at the same time. Great. The problem with that though, fast-forward 10 years, is it started burying people because you've now de-emphasized movement quality and you've over-emphasized scores. Right? So this is a classic example. If you go a- and you watch Pumping Iron, you'll see, or any bodybuilder, you'll see if they're doing a bicep curl, they don't even really pay attention to the rep range. They don't really pay attention to the load. They are looking at their muscle, they're trying to figure out, "How do I get that thing to fire?" They're squeezing, they're flexing, they're posing. At the end of every set, they're trying to figure out, "Am I getting enough pump?" It is exclusively founded on exercise quality. The rep range, the numbers almost irrelevant. When you go to the other model, exercise technique, it doesn't matter. Just get the most amount of weight up or the amount of reps or the fastest time, et cetera, et cetera. High intensity-

    10. AHAndrew Huberman55:43

        This would be CrossFit. I've walked past some CrossFit studios, I've done two CrossFit classes.

    11. AGAndy Galpin55:46

        I don't want to get sued. So you said CrossFit, I didn't.

    12. AHAndrew Huberman55:48

        Oh, oh no, I, I enjoyed them. I definitely, uh, felt like I was working hard. I-

    13. AGAndy Galpin55:52

        Oh, you will.

    14. AHAndrew Huberman55:52

        I observed a lot of people in very close proximity, um, doing Olympic lifts and doing kipping, that's where you kick your legs-

    15. AGAndy Galpin56:00

        Yep.

    16. AHAndrew Huberman56:00

        ... folks, you know, sort of like bucking and, um, kipping type pull-ups. Um, no, I, I enjoyed it. Uh, it wasn't for me for the long term.

    17. AGAndy Galpin56:09

        Sure.

    18. AHAndrew Huberman56:09

        But it did seem that there was, um, a lot of ballistic movement in-

    19. AGAndy Galpin56:13

        Yeah.

    20. AHAndrew Huberman56:13

        ... close proximity to other people. Um, so the hazard to me seemed more about that than the actual movements.

    21. AGAndy Galpin56:19

        Well, a- again, the, the point I'm setting up here is that was actually a really brilliant solution for a lot of the problems the classic bodybuilding hypertrophy introduced. So it got away from isolation movements and got people doing big movements, which are more effective, generally better. Uh, it got people doing things fast and explosive. That's more athletic, that is more important for longevity. It solved a lot of the problems. Joint health wasn't getting crashed. The issue they went with is they just pushed the pace on score rather than quality. They pushed the pace on how many people can be in here at the same time. So now you're doing higher risk movements, higher intensity, higher fatigue, and with a total, not that they don't care about technique, but it's not the thing that they're most concerned about. It's getting the number and the thing done. They solved the time issue though. You can get tremendous results in three days a week under 45 minutes each session, et cetera. Burn people out though, way too much high intensity way too often. And the other problem, safety concerns, all kinds of orthopedic issues and other stuff.

    22. AHAndrew Huberman57:21

        Can

13. 57:22 – 1:04:19

    Women & Weight Training

    1. AHAndrew Huberman57:22

       I, um, interrupt you for a moment and just ask a question as we go through this arc of the history of why endurance training predominated or strength training or bodybuilding type training or CrossFit type training? 'Cause I think this is fascinating and I know we're about to arrive at where we are today-

    2. AGAndy Galpin57:37

       (laughs) Yeah.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman57:37

       ... and what the future looks like for, for people and what they should focus on and do. At what point, if any, do you think resistance training started to become adopted by women? You know, there was no equivalent of Arnold Schwarzenegger. There was, um, Linda Hamilton in The Terminator.

    4. AGAndy Galpin57:55

       Yeah.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman57:56

       Um-

    6. AGAndy Galpin57:56

       Yeah.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman57:56

       There are some impressive, uh, physiques certainly on, uh, female actresses and, um, athletes.

    8. AGAndy Galpin58:03

       Mm-hmm.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman58:03

       Um, the Williams sisters, you know, very impressive, um, musculature and physiques and of course their tennis playing-

    10. AGAndy Galpin58:08

        Yep.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman58:08

        ... speaks for itself. Um, h- has that happened yet? I mean, ha- what I mean is, um, do you think since you work with both men and women-

    12. AGAndy Galpin58:19

        Yeah.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman58:19

        ... um, do you think that most women understand that weight training, um, done properly is going to be extremely beneficial for them? Maybe even especially for them in terms of, um, offsetting bone density loss and things of that sort? Um, or are we still waiting for, uh, the stimu- the, uh, popular, uh, stimulus for getting e- you know, 80% of, of young women thinking, "I want to lift weights."

    14. AGAndy Galpin58:44

        Yeah. Um, hard for me to answer 'cause I'm not, like, I'm not a woman, right? Now, I have a daughter. She's four. So we'll, we'll see. Um, what I can say is, is I've probably worked with I don't know how many professional athletes in total. A lot. I've worked with them, probably 14 professional sports. I've worked with, uh, Cy Young winners, MVPs, like, the whole, all, all the credentials, right? I bet f- 35%, 40% of the athletes I've worked with are female. So I've worked with Olympic gold medalists, I've worked with, uh, bronze medalists in, in multiple sports. I've worked with, uh, the most decorated power lifter, you know, of all time. So in a number of these areas, fighters, world championship, all these things. Um, for me, I, I feel like that burst has already happened. Um, my students, if you look at my classroom, uh, I don't know what the numbers are, but there is no small number of females in exercise science and exercise physiology. Um, if you look in our laboratories, that's one thing you will see. There are very few female exercise scientists. There are very few, uh, female strength and conditioning coaches. But that number is, is, is coming down at a, at a, a- astronomical rate. You, you have, um, people that are being hired, um, in every sport. Uh, y- you pick the NFL, you pick Major League Baseball, every s- every few months we're hearing first female hired for this, first female hired for that. Um, the Yankees, Rachel, Rachel Balkovech, fantastic.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:00:05

        Mm-hmm.

    16. AGAndy Galpin1:00:05

        Uh, you know, yeah, she's-

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:00:06

        Yeah, Rachel's been out to my lab. She's terrific.

    18. AGAndy Galpin1:00:08

        Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. That's-

    19. AHAndrew Huberman1:00:09

        Yeah.

    20. AGAndy Galpin1:00:09

        She's fantastic. I mean, she's now being hired as the, uh, I think she's a hitting coach now, actual sport coach. She, she's going to be a GM, right? That's, this her goal. She's a terminator. Um, so tha- that's already happening. And my students that are coming through our program are getting placed in these roles. They haven't gotten through yet a lot in terms of being an actual scientist, um, but they're getting there. Um, sport scientists in the NBA are bringing hired females in terms of like big data collection-

    21. AHAndrew Huberman1:00:33

        Right.

    22. AGAndy Galpin1:00:33

        ... and sports science and tech we'll cover-

    23. AHAndrew Huberman1:00:35

        Mm-hmm.

    24. AGAndy Galpin1:00:35

        ... you know, um, in a- another discussion. But, uh, I think it's happening whether or not the, the cultural and social pre- I, I can't speak to that end of the equation. What I can speak to though is, um, one of the things I think is, is most fun coming forward scientifically is...You know, a number of years ago, the NIH came back li- came through with their mandates of saying, "It's no longer acceptable to exclude women from scientific research," right? 'Cause we just did that for decades.

    25. AHAndrew Huberman1:01:03

        Well, what happened, uh, uh, just to f- fill this in 'cause I think it's worth noting, is that for many years, um, studies even on rodents-

    26. AGAndy Galpin1:01:11

        Yeah.

    27. AHAndrew Huberman1:01:11

        ... were mainly carried out on male rodents because the assumption, and the assumption turned out to be wrong, but the assumption was that the physiology of female rodents, because they don't have a menstrual cycle, it's not 28 days, they have an estrus cycle, it's four days, or, uh, a different type of cycle, that that would somehow disrupt the data. Turns out th- that's entirely wrong. Now, it's actually required, uh, when you sit on a grant study panel, um, which are the people who evaluate grants, you, they ask, they literally say, "Did they meet the criteria for sex as a biological variable?" Here, we're not talking about sex as the verb.

    28. AGAndy Galpin1:01:44

        Yeah.

    29. AHAndrew Huberman1:01:44

        We're talking about sex as, uh, uh, biological sex. And, um, if you don't say yes, that's a strong hit against the grant and if-

    30. AGAndy Galpin1:01:50

        Yeah.
14. 1:04:19 – 1:06:15

    Exercise Physiology History & Current Protocol Design

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:19

    2. AGAndy Galpin1:04:19

       So just to jump back on our history discussion and to finish that point of where we're at now and where I think we're going to go or should go. So we walked through the bodybuilding kind of running everything and people walking into a gym, any time they lift weights, they're- they're making all their choices based on the assumption that maximizing muscle size is the goal, and clearly that's not the case. There are other adaptations you may be after. So we talked about how that had problems and then we talked about how some of these other forms of exercise filled those gaps, a- and then what problems those things introduced. Well, I think we're actually at a sp- point where that pendulum is kind of slowly shifting into the middle. What I mean by that is if you want to maximize muscle strength, we look towards the power lifting community. If you want to maximize muscle power, we're gonna look to the weightlifting community. If you want to look for muscular endurance or well-roundedness, maybe we look into the CrossFit communities and some of these obstacle course races or functionality things. So what we can do now is generate protocols that get us the exact adaptations we want and not ones we don't want, because we can look back at each of these different styles of training and pick and choose optimal protocols or combinations for them. So if somebody simply wants to get healthy, like we talked about when we listed the nine adaptations and I mentioned health wasn't one of them. That's because what determines your health versus what determines my optimal health differs, so if I need more hypertrophy, I can look towards bodybuilding concepts, but if I have enough or maybe for personal reasons I decide I have too much or I don't want to add any more, then I can say, "Hey, how can I get stronger without getting bigger?" And boom, I look towards powerlifting concepts. How can I get more powerful? How can I get faster, but I don't, uh, you know, again, wanna lose fat? Okay, great. Or if I want physique changes. So we have all these different areas we can pick and choose from, uh, that have expertise in specific adaptations and develop ourselves perfect protocols, uh, based on that

15. 1:06:15 – 1:07:18

    InsideTracker

    1. AGAndy Galpin1:06:15

       information.

    2. AHAndrew Huberman1:06:16

       I'd like to take a brief break to acknowledge our sponsor, InsideTracker. InsideTracker is a personalized nutrition platform that analyzes data from your blood and DNA to help you better understand your body and help you reach your health goals. I've long been a believer in getting regular blood work done for the simple reason that many of the factors that impact your immediate and long-term health and well-being can only be analyzed from a quality blood test. One issue with a lot of blood tests and DNA tests out there, however, is that you get information back about various levels of lipids and hormones and metabolic factors, et cetera, but you don't know what to do with that information. InsideTracker makes knowing what to do with all that information exceedingly easy.They have a personalized platform that lets you see what your specific numbers are, of course, but then also what sorts of behavioral dos and don'ts, what sorts of nutritional changes, what sorts of supplementation would allow you to bring those levels into the ranges that are optimal for you. If you'd like to try InsideTracker, you can visit insidetracker.com/huberman to get 20% off any of InsideTracker's plans. Again, that's insidetracker.com/huberman to get 20% off.

16. 1:07:18 – 1:12:38

    Movement/Skill Test

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:18

       So with the understanding in mind as to how we all, myself included, arrived at such lopsided fitness, too much endurance, not enough strength, too much strength, not enough endurance (laughs) , it's really hard to imagine that anyone's perfect in this regard. Can you walk us through the nine different adaptations that you mentioned earlier and give us a way to assess our level of ability or our level of adaptation in each of those nine?

    2. AGAndy Galpin1:07:47

       All right. The very first one we want to talk about is, is movement skill. Now, set aside sport specific, so I'm not going to give you an assessment for optimal golf technique, swing. This is really about human movement so that you stay injury-free a- and you can continue to train for as long as possible. So what are the minimum requirements? Now, if you can have access to a highly qualified physical therapist or movement specialist, that's the best route, right? Go to them. Have them, uh, identify all of your movement patterns, overhead pressing, squatting, running, all these things. That's your gold standard. If you want to do it yourself, though, here's a, a very simple four-step solution. So the way that I, uh, teach this is I go joint by joint. And so I, I think of this just as the major ones, your shoulder, your elbow, um, your low back, hip, knee, and ankle. Okay. Now, what you can do is do a representative movement for you. So if you bench a lot, use the bench. If you do pull-ups, use the pull-up. If you squat, do that. I would recommend doing an upper body press, an upper body pull, a lower body press, and lower body pull. An example would be a pushup, a pull-up or a bent row, uh, a squat, and then a deadlift. That would be a very, very well-rounded approach. What you're going to do is do that movement, and I, and I would record it for yourself, and, and record a frontal view and a side view. Uh, probably do three to 10 repetitions per angle, okay? Slow and controlled. You don't need any body weight. What you want to do is move and you want to look for four key things at every joint. All right. So again, imagine I'm doing a squat. I'm gonna do a squat and I'm gonna focus on just my ankle, and I'm gonna look for these four things at the ankle, and then an- I'm gonna go back and watch my knee and look for these same four things at the knee, through the hip, et cetera. All right. So what are these four things? Number one is you want to look for symmetry. So symmetry is front to back, left to right, and, uh, your right limb and your left limb. All right. And, and so what we want to look for are, um, if they aren't moving perfectly, that's fine, but you want to see is one moving further ahead than the other one? Is one, uh, turning to the side and one's not? Is one fidgeting and, and twitching around differently? So you want to look just to check to see and make sure that they're stable. That's one. Um, number two, you want to look for stability. So key indicators here are things like if you, if you can't go through a squat, a controlled squat where your knees don't start shaking, like that would be an instability issue. So can you do the movement slow? Can you pause at the bottom, maybe three seconds, maybe five seconds or 10? You should have complete control of that movement at all of these joints. Um, are your hips sliding to one side when you stand up? Is one elbow closer to your body when you're benching and the other one's more flared out? These are the things I'm talking about, right? I'm not worried about what angle they should be at or not. You're simply looking for asymmetries or instabilities. All right. So again, as you're pushing up, does one elbow start flipping and twitching and going all over the place? The third one is what I call awareness. So, uh, there are a lot of movement technique issues that are simply people don't know. And so you'll watch them squat. I do this in my classes all the time. I'll have 100 kids out there squatting and you'll see some horrible squat technique. And then when you just tell them, "Hey, did you realize your heels were supposed to be on the ground a- all times when you squat?" They're like, "Oh, okay." And they can correct it. It's not actually a movement flaw. It was just simply an awareness. "I didn't know and then I actually didn't realize that that was happening in that position." So we want all of our joints to be going through a general full range of motion, which is number four. So the ankles, uh, during like a squat, your knees should be able to go as far over your toes as possible while maintaining good position, your feet flat on the floor, your, you know, three points of contact, your whole f- foot, and you're not compromising another joint. So that's all you're going to look for, those four things, symmetry, stability, awareness, and range of motion through each joint, through each movement. It sounds, um, difficult and time-consuming. It's really not, right? You, you can generally kind of clear these things in one or two repetitions in a couple of seconds. And what you're really going to look for, there's lots of scoring schemes. You can, you know, test the... A physical therapist will sort you. I just look for absolutely terrible, like can't do it at all, minor flaw, or pretty close to good. That, that's really all I'm looking for. So my scoring system is zero, one, three. Zero is like, you're not going to do this exercise 'cause you're at a very high acute risk. You might get hurt on rep one tomorrow. Number one, like a score of one is like, there's a minor flaw here. We can probably do it, but we need to be cautious of load and volume. And the other one is maybe it's perfect, maybe it's not, but go ahead and sort of do it on a reasonable protocol. You'll be fine. Um, so that's generally, uh, what you would need to do as a cost-free method of identifying good movement technique within any of the things that, that you would do.

17. 1:12:38 – 1:18:42

    Speed Test, Power Test

    1. AGAndy Galpin1:12:38

    2. AHAndrew Huberman1:12:38

       What about speed?

    3. AGAndy Galpin1:12:40

       I actually don't think this is one most people should test. If you're a high performance athlete, we can run a 40-yard dash or we can do, uh, some different things with a velocity transducer on a barbell if you're a weightlifter or something. For most people, pure speed is really maximum velocity or acceleration, are kind of the two ways we break it down. It's not s- generally not that necessary to test.

    4. AHAndrew Huberman1:13:02

       What about number three, power? Which I believe before you told me was speed times force.

    5. AGAndy Galpin1:13:08

       So the reason why I don't worry too much about speed is because you can infer a lot of it from a power test and a power test is easier to do, a- as well as easier to train for for most people. So the, the cost free version here is a simple broad jump. So this is, uh, stand, uh, with, you know, normal position, jump out as far in front of you as you possibly can and measure the distance between where you started and the back of your heel where it lands. A super basic number to look for there is your height. So you should be able to broad jump how tall you are. If you're 5'5", you should hit 5'5". 6'5", et cetera. It's not perfect. Um, that's gonna ratchet down a little bit, about 15% for females. They just simply don't have the power in general that men have and so you're gonna want to bring that down a little bit. But that's a, it's a very crude number. If you were to look at, like, a high performance NFL player, if they're six feet tall, they're going to be jumping, like, nine to 10 to 11 feet. If you can jump your body height, um, we're not looking for optimization in this particular test, but you are looking for red flags. If you can jump your body, uh, height, you're going to be just fine.

    6. AHAndrew Huberman1:14:13

       That's incredibly straightforward, and yet I have one question.

    7. AGAndy Galpin1:14:16

       Yeah.

    8. AHAndrew Huberman1:14:17

       I'm assuming that I can squat down as low as I need to before I jump. I can swing my arms from back to front as hard or with as much momentum, um, as I can muster, and when I land, you said I'm going to take the measure from where the back of my heels...

    9. AGAndy Galpin1:14:32

       You want to measure the distance you actually covered. So to clarify, there's no running approach here. There's no, um, steps into it. You're going to stand kind of still. Yeah, you can swing, bounce as much as you'd like to do. You're going to projectile off. So you're going to measure the distance from the tip of your toe, so basically stand behind the line, and then the furthest point back where you land. So basically, the worst possible score, not the best possible, uh, 'cause your feet won't land symmetrically. One's probably going to be a little bit farther. Now technically, if you fall backwards and your hand touches the ground, we mark that number, but in this case, just use the furthest point back of your back heel and go from there.

Episode duration: 2:01:17