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

1. 0:00 – 7:19

   Optimal Fitness Programming

   1. AHAndrew Huberman0:00

      (Upbeat music) Welcome to the Huberman Lab Guest Series, where I and an expert guest discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today's episode marks the fourth in the six-episode series on fitness, exercise, and performance, and today's episode is all about optimal fitness programming. That is, how to design a fitness and exercise program that can achieve the goals that you want for fitness and for sports performance. Dr. Andy Galpin, great to be back. In previous episodes, you taught us about the various adaptations that occur at the level of cells, at the level of organs, indeed at the level of the entire body, that underlie things like improvements in strength and speed, hypertrophy, AKA muscle growth, and the various forms of endurance. And you laid out beautifully the various protocols that one can do in order to achieve each and every one of those adaptations. Today, I would love for you to teach us how we can combine different protocols to achieve multiple adaptations in parallel. For instance, how to improve endurance and strength, how to achieve some level of hypertrophy, perhaps directed hypertrophy at specific muscle groups, while also maintaining endurance and perhaps improving speed, for instance. And, if you would, I'd love for you to tell us how we can combine different protocols and vary those across the week, across the month, across the year so that we can make regular progress, and perhaps even you could give us a window into the ways to make the fastest progress possible.

   2. AGAndy Galpin1:34

      Yeah, I would love to do that. You know, we've invested a lot of time in the previous episodes covering background, and concepts, and detail about the physiology so you understood why you're making the choices you're making and why other choices are less effective. In this discussion, I would actually like to jump maybe more directly to the answer a- and ri- kind of get right into the protocols, so and maybe a little bit less background. Uh, if you're interested in that stuff, I, I suppose you're gonna have to go backwards a little bit and watch some of those, uh, previous episodes. But I would love to jump into just some samples, um, some case studies, if you will, and kind of walk through different protocols. I know that over the course of my, uh, 11 years as a, a college professor and, um, being in the, the public space a little bit, probably the m- most numerous style of question I have gotten is exactly that. "So I, I know the rep range for this," or, "I know the style of training for that adaptation, but how do I put them together?" And I, I would just like to spend our time today going through those things. And the reason I want to do it is this. Some people listening at home surely, uh, just love exercise. They're already bought in and they're gonna train no matter what, and they're interested in just actually being more effective. And so the way that you structure and put your plan together will in large part determine getting more progress for, for less effort, or actually being able to put the same amount of effort in and, and getting results faster. There's also some folks probably listening who are like, "Okay, I exercise, I do what I can. I'm bought into the benefits and you've talked so elaborately over the, the 100-plus episodes you've done about, um, the various benefits of exercise." But you don't like abs- You're kind of doing it because you know it's important but you're not there. So for those folks, it's sort of like, okay, how can we actually make this thing more effective so we can make sure you hit the things you have to ha- absolutely have to get for the short and long-term benefits, right? To make sure that you're looking the way you want to look, you're performing physically the way you want to perform, and that you can do that across your lifespan. So how can we give you all some structure, um, to where, again, you don't have to turn into an absolute lover of physical fitness and it doesn't have to take over your life, but you can still get more results for your same time restrictions? Whether that be you have two days a week, or five days a week, or only certain access to equipment or experience, whatever the case may be, um, how can we help those folks as well put together a protocol that will get them closer to their goals with less restrictions?

   3. AHAndrew Huberman4:07

      Fantastic. Uh, and I'm hoping that along the way you'll also point us to how often to take the fitness assessment for each of the adaptations that you referred to in a previous episode. We will also link to that fitness assessment segment in the show note captions for this episode. Because that fitness assessment for different adaptations I think is a really powerful way for people to touch in and see, you know, how much long endurance do they have, how, how much, um, anaerobic capacity do they have, how much strength do they really have? And then perhaps you'd also be willing to throw in a couple of additional ways that we can assess our level of fitness and progress in this arc of, uh, fitness program across the year.

   4. AGAndy Galpin4:46

      Amazing. Uh, I can't wait to do that. I think it is also important before we jump in to acknowledge a lot of folks may be thinking to themselves, "Uh, well, I don't really necessarily need a plan. Why do I have to do that? I don't have a certain goal I'm going after. I'm not running a race anytime soon. I'm not a competitive athlete. I just, I go to the gym and I work out." And that's great. Well, I would like to try to convince you that regardless of where you're at, having a plan will achieve those things we just talked about, which is more success in a shorter timeframe. There's actually a significant amount of research to support this. Those individuals who go on a specific training plan, compared to those who do not, will receive better results, right? Independent of the effectiveness of the program, right? So we've talked in previous episodes about tons of different styles and strategies. And to reiterate, it really doesn't matter which one you pick. The fact that you have a plan is always more effective than not having a plan. And so w- Again, even if you're not planning on competing with something, if you want to shorten the amount of time you're in the gym, get more results from it, I would strongly encourage to put something together. The two largest reasons why people don't get results with their fitness training protocol is, number one, adherence, and then number two, some sort of progressive overload.Both of those two things are challenging to accomplish without a plan, right? So the reason people don't go to the gym, one of them, and one of the reasons why it takes them so long, is 'cause they don't walk in with a very specific plan. It's sort of like going to the grocery store and figuring out what you're going to buy, versus knowing exactly what you're gonna get on your shopping list, grabbing those things and getting out. You'll notice your time in the grocery store is half the length. You're more productive and you didn't waste money on extra things. Okay. So that alone will drive adherence because you're now going to think to yourself, "Oh, that 90-minute workout I do is actually really just 60." And so now the next time you go to train, you're like, "Man, I don't have 90 minutes," and you realize it's only 60 or, or 40 or 30 or 20, whatever it needs to be. So that alone will get you there. The second part of that, which is overload, it's very difficult to understand and remember, well, the last time I did lat raises I used I think five pounds, and then I think I did like twelve. Well, if you don't have some sort of system of tracking, and this can be as simple as a notebook, just writing down what you did before, and doing a little bit more the next time, that is going to almost guarantee you success. So having some structure, and this structure can be fairly loose, we're gonna talk about a bunch of different examples, um, is something I strongly encourage everyone to utilize for their exercise.

2. 7:19 – 9:53

   Momentous, Eight Sleep

   1. AGAndy Galpin7:19

   2. AHAndrew Huberman7:19

      Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is also separate from Dr. Andy Galpin's teaching and research roles at Cal State Fullerton. It is, however, part of our desire and effort to bring zero-cost-to-consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, we'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Momentous. Momentous 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 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 in the middle of the night, and a different temperature as you approach morning, each of which can place you into the optimal stages of sleep and have you waking up feeling more refreshed than ever. If you'd like to try Eight Sleep, you can go to eightsleep.com/huberman and check out their Pod 3 cover and save $150 at checkout. Eight Sleep currently ships in the USA, Canada, United Kingdom, select countries in the EU and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com/huberman to save $150

3. 9:53 – 19:52

   #1: Plan Fitness Goals, S.M.A.R.T. Goals

   1. AHAndrew Huberman9:53

      at checkout. So what sorts of things should people be thinking about when developing an overall fitness program?

   2. AGAndy Galpin9:59

      A few minutes ago, we were talking about how two of the major reasons people don't get as much out of their training programs as they would like is because of, one, a lack of adherence, and two, a lack of progressive overload. So the solution to that is constructing a plan that lives within your realistic limitations. So I would like to walk you through, uh, my ten step approach to how I design training programs. Now before I do that, I think it is fair and important for the audience to understand that this is simply my approach. Uh, I've been doing this a long time. I, I played college football and I wrote my own training programs back then. Uh, I have and am still working with professional athletes and the PGA Tour and the NFL, the NBA, Major League Baseball, as well as a ton of general population folks. So this is a combination of the evidence base that we've been talking about in terms of best practices for strength and conditioning, as well as just my years of experience. So there are many, many ways one could do this. I'm not even suggesting this is the best. This is simply how I do it. This is exactly how I handle it when a new individual comes to me and how I teach my students. So step number one is assessing properly and identifying a training goal. Now that's actually sort of funny because we hear that a lot, but a lot of people actually never take that step. Not to call anybody in the room out. (laughs)

   3. AHAndrew Huberman11:21

      (laughs) What, what's happening here is this morning, uh, Andy, Dr. Galpin and I were, were training together and uh, he was providing amazing tips on form and, um, set rep cadence and this sort of thing. And he said, "So what's your training goal for, uh, the next 12 months?" And I paused and it turned into a very long pause, uh, because...

   4. AGAndy Galpin11:41

      (laughs) Which is an easy, nice way of saying he didn't have an answer.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman11:44

      I didn't have an answer. I, I, of course I don't just want to maintain what-

   6. AGAndy Galpin11:49

      Yeah.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman11:49

      ... I've developed in terms of strength and hypertrophy and endurance, but, um, I don't have a clear goal.

   8. AGAndy Galpin11:56

      Right.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman11:56

      So I'm hoping that by the end of today's discussion I will be on track to a clear set of goals to train for.

   10. AGAndy Galpin12:01

       Amazing. Uh, I'm not gonna bore you all here, but really I can't stress enough how important that step really truly is to getting results.Uh, the analogy we use here is, i- if you left your house and you were attempting to get to th- (smacks lips) the grocery store, um, and you just started driving. And if you drove every possible road, you would eventually get to a grocery store. And so, yes, that can work. A better approach is saying, "Here's where I am. There's where I want to go. What is the optimal route there?" And that's really what you're doing with goals. So it is a boring step. It is not interesting to hear. I don't have any real hacks or tricks for you. Um, but it is step number one on purpose. We have to know exactly where we're going. You can do this in two ways. Way number one is to just pick something. Arbitrarily decide, "I'm going to run a 5K." Or, "I've done that before and I want to improve it by 10 seconds. I want to lose 10 pounds." You can just pick one. That's great. Another way is to run through that fitness testing protocol we described, uh, a, a few episodes before. And if you do that, you can see which of these areas that maybe you have the largest lagging in or what is the most severe performance anchor, is how we refer to it, and then choose that as your primary goal. So either option. Some people come into, to training programs with a very clear goal in mind, they want to add more muscle or whatever, whatever. Okay, great. If you're like, "I don't really know. You know, I, I just kind of work out or..." Then run the fisti- fitness testing protocol. You'll see what score is the lowest in, and then you'll maybe make that a priority for the next, say, three months.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman13:37

       So the first step is to identify a specific or set of specific training goals.

   12. AGAndy Galpin13:43

       A really nice tool for helping you set a goal is a system called SMART, right? Now, there's a little bit of debate on what those (laughs) acronyms actually stand for, but we'll get close enough, right? So SMART is often specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. So starting off with S, specific. In general, the more specific your goal is, the higher likelihood you will have at succeeding in that. M being measurable means it needs to be something that you can actually put a metric on. So this can be objective or subjective. But generally, I like to have at least one objective measure. So remembering objective is something that is not based on feeling. It is not up to... This could be something simple like your body weight. It could be how much you can bench press, what's your one-mile time, um, any, whatever is most important to you. It actually doesn't have to be a fitness-related goal. Uh, for example, if you're using fitness as a way to enhance your sleep, uh, the main metric you may be interested in is, you know, amount of hours sleep, slept. It could be something like efficiency or whatever is most interesting. It could be work productivity. It doesn't really matter. So it doesn't have to actually be the, the fitness goal. Uh, but what is the motivation of why you're doing it? So that's specific. Measurable, um, attainable or, or actionable, this is often described, is something that is within your capability. Um, so attainable, a bad example of attainable is something like, "My goal is to win more games." That may not be up to you. Uh, the team, the other team you're playing, it could influence it, the schedule, et cetera. So attainable should be something that is within your control. Realistic, uh, or relevant to you is something that is, again, something realistic that you can achieve. You wouldn't want to make a goal that is, you know, you want to double your body mass. Th- this is not going to happen. So think about the constraints. How old are you? What's your training experience? How much time do you really have to invest in this? And then pick something that is realistic and then, honestly, my little twist here is, take that and minus 10%. 'Cause typically, when (laughs) people put together training programs, their, their goal tends to be quite lofty and they get some small percentage of the way in, realize they're never going to get there, and then back off. We actually... This sort of reminds me of a, a classic deception study that we did in, in my lab (laughs) one time where we took people and we had them do this, um, maximal front raise basically.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman16:09

       Right.

   14. AGAndy Galpin16:09

       So you held a dumbbell out in front of you, uh, for as long as you possibly could. And the goal here was actually, it's a deception study, so we're tricking them. And so we said, "Okay, we want to just get normative values to see how long people can hold this front raise." And I think we used something like 5% of their body weight. Uh, and so they came in and they did it one time and we timed them. They didn't get to see the clock. They left. And then we said, "We gotta come back in and repeat it," right? "We gotta do a couple of tries here to get a normal value in case it's off," whatever. Well, the participants were split up into four groups. So group one actually was told that their time was 15% lower than that they actually got. Group two was 5% lower. Group three was 5% higher. And group four was 15% higher. So the second time they came in to do it, our graduate student, quote unquote, "made a mistake" and left the timer in front of them. So the first time, again, they did the exercise, they're just holding it. They don't ha- have any idea how long they're holding it. The second time, they had a giant iPad set, like, just a little bit off-centered where they can clearly see it so they watched the time go by. And of course, what happened was, those folks, say, who did one minute the very first time when they tested, they came back in to do the second time and they're holding it and we told them they actually got 45 seconds, when in reality, they had done a minute. So they're holding it and holding it and they think they only did 45 seconds. By the time they get to, like, second 40, 41, 42, they get past 45, they almost all quit, like, 47, 48 seconds. 'Cause they wanted to beat their previous score, but then were like, "Cool, I beat it." And then they quit early.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman17:48

       Hm.

   16. AGAndy Galpin17:49

       So we're actually not yet to failure, but they were just happy enough to beat what they thought they'd done and then they quit. The other group on the inverse side, again, say they got a minute. We told them they got a minute and 15 seconds. They got to, like, 45 seconds, 50 seconds, then started realizing, "Oh, man, I have 30 more seconds to go." And they quit way early.... because the carrot was way too far out. They realized, "I'm never gonna get there, so I'm just gonna stop now." Can you guess which group did the best on the post-test?

   17. AHAndrew Huberman18:19

       Ones that were just within about 5% of...

   18. AGAndy Galpin18:21

       Totally. So they wanted to improve. And so again, say they got a minute the first time. We told them they got a minute five. Or sorry, they got a minute five the first time. We told them they only got a minute, they actually exceeded that greatly, because they wanted the PR. So, um, making sure that that goal is properly aligned. It needs to be a little bit scary, a little bit unrealistic. "Well, you're gonna have to work for this." If it's too easy, you'll quit. It won't feel like a challenge. If it's too hard, though, you'll quit early as well. So you want to make sure it's that reasonable balance of like, "Ah, should I train today?" Or like, "Maybe I'll just go through- I... if I do that, I'm not gonna hit. Ah, god, I gotta get after it." But not like, "Oh my god, like, there's just no chance here." ʻcause you're gonna, so you're gonna walk away early.

   19. AHAndrew Huberman19:09

       That's a fantastic study, I have to say. Uh, it's very simple. Uh, I think it illustrates a number of important psychological principles about goal setting, motivation, self-perception, but also the dopamine system. Um, you know, the, the dopamine system is this universal reward system that... meaning it doesn't only work for food or only work for fitness goals or only work for academic goals or relationship goals. It, it is the universal substrate for all of that. And, um, I actually think there's some real gems of information in, um, the study design that you described. So, uh, just cue that for maybe a potential collaboration between our laboratories, because-

   20. AGAndy Galpin19:50

       Yeah, absolutely.

   21. AHAndrew Huberman19:51

       ... um, I think it's very important,

4. 19:52 – 26:25

   Intermediate Goals, Dopamine, Identify Your “Defender”, Goal Timing

   1. AHAndrew Huberman19:52

      but it does queue up another question, uh, that, uh, relevant to fitness in particular, which is, what are your thoughts on intermediate goals? So let's say my goal is to drop two percentages... 2% of body fat from where I am now, a year from now.

   2. AGAndy Galpin20:09

      Mm-hmm.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman20:10

      So roll into the next year from now, uh, about 2% lower on body fat, but maintain my lean body mass, or maybe even increase it.

   4. AGAndy Galpin20:22

      Yep.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman20:23

      How should I assess progress? Um, you know, because the dopamine system loves a goal, right? It loves anticipation of a goal, but it responds best to we sort of re-up, if you will, our dopamine, anytime we get a signal that we are on the right track to that goal. And that signal could be, "Okay, I did the workout. I just trust that these workouts-"

   6. AGAndy Galpin20:45

      Mm-hmm.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman20:45

      "... are going to give me the result I want." But of course, we know that when people get a glimmer of the idea or some objective feedback that they're on the right path, that dopamine system really fires and provides motivation for continuing toward the ultimate goal. And, uh, as we've talked about in the, um, strength, speed, and hypertrophy episode, resistance training, i- itself has this built into it. Because of the infusion of blood into the muscles, you actually get a, a little window into what you might get in terms of an adaptation simply by ver- by way of the so-called pump. Whereas endurance type work generally doesn't have that. You don't see yourself get better, drop back, and then adapting to actually get better. But that's actually what you s- see with weight training. So given all of that contour of the dopamine system, what sorts of intermediate goals should I set for myself or should somebody set for themselves? And I realize it will probably depend on the ultimate goal-

   8. AGAndy Galpin21:38

      Yeah.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman21:39

      ... but would you say check in, um, on progress once every week, every month, three months?

   10. AGAndy Galpin21:46

       I, I can't... I don't know if you can tell the look on my face. Uh, (laughs) I love this to- this question and this topic. I spend so much time on it on my, uh, senior graduate level program design course. I, I've been fortunate to work with a few athletes where we've had multiple years. And if you can really take the time to step back and go, it's not about optimizing for the next six weeks. Uh, and in this case, it's not the next fight. It is the championship fight that we need to get to in three years, or it is the Olympics, which are on a quad program, right? You're really optimizing for that four year. If you can have that foresight and really think about that and then work backwards, you can see some pretty tremendous things. The, the sort of saying that is like we gen- we tend to overestimate what we can get done in a week and underestimate what can happen in a year. That can be extraordinarily powerful. However, you have to have those metrics called out ahead of time, because you will lose motivation in that short term because you won't see that result immediately. But if you remember, "I'm on a path to 4%" or 2% or whatever you need to be. Therefore, I only need to be this far right now. I need to be that far and then that far. It's actually quite clear. And so what we would actually do in that scenario, not to go like so off track here, 'cause I, I can really go on this stuff, is a co- let, let's say it was the year recommendation. You're gonna actually need to go to the last part of SMART, which is timely. So part of setting this goal is making sure you understand the time domain responsible. And it's actually quite great here, because not to go Inception on us where we're like list within a list and Rob kills us over here. But number one of this program design thing was assessing your goal. Number two is identifying your defender. What I mean by that is, what is stopping you from hitting that goal? So you want to lose 2% body fat in the next year. Okay, great. What's gonna stop us? Once we can achieve that, and we'll go into more of that in, in a second, then you just start walking that 2% backwards. So you might have to go something like this. "Look, every time I start working out really hard, I always get hurt." Interesting. Okay, great. So maybe instead of jumping really hard into an inter- high intensity interval training program, knowing we're likely to hurt something or get burnt out or quit or whatever the, the defender is for you...Maybe we invest something right now, which is maybe improving your flexibility, or working on movement technique, whatever's gonna stop you from getting hurt. Or maybe we progress slower so we don't get there. That will allow us to do the work necessary to hit that goal 12 months from now, not two weeks from now, not two months from now. Maybe that's not the case. Maybe you're like, "No look, hey, I move well, I feel like I'm in, like, decent shape. I've got enough muscle mass on me." Um, we've talked in previous episodes why having insufficient muscle mass is sometimes detrimental for fat loss. So you checked all that boxes. "I don't get hurt very often, right? U- uh, I got equipment around, no problem. I, I've got the time in my schedule, and I have enough muscle." Great. Well, now we maybe just split it up and say, "Look, we got 12 months, we got 2%." It's as simple as doing a half a percent per quarter of the year. And now all we're looking at is that number, right? I don't have to necessarily get all these things done. Um, I can go quarter, half percent, half percent, half percent, half percent. You're gonna get there. Right? The other sit- scenario that I laid out a second ago, it maybe needs to look like something like this. Quarter one is gonna be 0%. Like, whoa, whoa, yeah, yeah, that's right, you may not lose a pound for the next three months. We don't care. That's not the goal of these three months. I know that's the goal this year. That's our major macrocycle goal. We're going to get there. But to get there most effectively, we need to invest in, you know, working more with your chiropractor, or wh- whatever the thing is, right? That will allow us to then go half a percent quarter two when we can really start training, but we're gonna ramp into it. Quarter three, we're gonna go another half a percent. And now we're halfway there, quarter four, we've invested so much, you're ready to go, we're gonna go hard, we're gonna get that last 1% that last quarter. And we're gonna get there, and you won't be hurt.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman26:02

       So that makes it very clear. And I can also envision how the precise structure of these intermediate goals would vary depending on what sort of adaptation one is pursuing. And I do remember from our previous episodes, uh, that fat loss itself is not an adaptation. It is a byproduct of other adaptations. So I just want to make sure that you know that I, I was paying attention.

   12. AGAndy Galpin26:23

       Right.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman26:23

       It's com- it's committed to memory.

   14. AGAndy Galpin26:24

       Absolutely.

5. 26:25 – 36:13

   Multiple Goals, Synergistic Goals, Interference Effects

   1. AGAndy Galpin26:26

   2. AHAndrew Huberman26:26

      Some goals, such as fat loss, are very quant- quantifiable-

   3. AGAndy Galpin26:30

      Yeah.

   4. AHAndrew Huberman26:30

      ... um, and yet they might not be linear, right? It's, it's hard to know, you know, that the assumption is if you ingest, you know, X fewer calories than are required per day, then you'll lose X amount of weight, some percentage from body fat. I think, um, that cues up the idea that we need to build some flexibility into our-

   5. AGAndy Galpin26:47

      Mm-hmm.

   6. AHAndrew Huberman26:47

      ... our thinking about these intermediate goals in order to just make sure that dopamine system isn't tethered to exact numbers, uh, you know?

   7. AGAndy Galpin26:54

      Mm-hmm.

   8. AHAndrew Huberman26:55

      Because after all, uh, a reduction in 2% body fat, for instance, is really a desire to, uh, achieve a different sort of overall body composition or recomposition. Um, I don't know, by the way, that that's my exact goal. I, I think one of my-

   9. AGAndy Galpin27:08

      (laughs) .

   10. AHAndrew Huberman27:08

       ... my goals is to be able to run a mile faster. Um, and I'm sort of, um, haunted by this experience of wanting to run cross country in college and trying to walk on. We weren't a Division I school, but the threshold for being, um, considered for the team was you had to run a sub-10 minute two mile, which turns out to be very, very fast.

   11. AGAndy Galpin27:28

       That's really hard, yeah.

   12. AHAndrew Huberman27:29

       Yeah, I didn't, I did not do that. I didn't even come close.

   13. AGAndy Galpin27:32

       Yeah.

   14. AHAndrew Huberman27:32

       Um, but, uh, and I don't think that I could reasonably do that now, um, given-

   15. AGAndy Galpin27:39

       It'd be challenging.

   16. AHAndrew Huberman27:39

       Yeah, I'm not, I'm not interested in committing to the kind of training required. The sacrifice isn't meaningful enough for me, um, in this case.

   17. AGAndy Galpin27:47

       Fair and honest, yeah.

   18. AHAndrew Huberman27:48

       But lowering one's, um, mile, um, time to run a mile by, I don't know, 10% seems like a reasonable goal, um, across six months.

   19. AGAndy Galpin27:59

       Sure.

   20. AHAndrew Huberman28:00

       Great. So in the case of a goal like that, um, clearly there are specific training programs. But this raises the issue of, what if I have other goals as well?

   21. AGAndy Galpin28:08

       Mm-hmm.

   22. AHAndrew Huberman28:09

       Um, and at what point do people having multiple goals start to set up collisions between goals? How do we know whether or not something is reasonable not just o- on its own, but because of the other things that one has, um, structured into their program? So being able to reduce a mile time by 10% in six months, okay, maybe that's doable, maybe it's not. You can tell me. But also being able to, you know, double the amount that they can, um, do for a, you know, single repetition leg extension, (laughs) for that matter, uh, at the same time, that seems, th- those seem like incompatible goals.

   23. AGAndy Galpin28:44

       Right. So a couple of things. Number one, the more specific and precise you can be with a single goal, the faster you will get there, generally. So in theory, if you had one thing you wanted to achieve, the best way to go about it is to focus on that. Give it the most priority. That doesn't mean you can't do anything else along the way. You can. But you would want to focus on that. The more additional goals you bring in, the more distraction you're creating for that primary goal. Depending on what those goals are, you can actually do them at the same time. Um, some other combinations are less effective. Think about it like this. We went through those nine adaptations, and we went through them in a specific order on purpose. The closer those adaptations are together in that list, the more compatible they are to training each other. The further away, they become more challenging. So just to give a few examples, if you wanted to improve your speed and power, you could basically train those simultaneously. They would not interfere with each other at all. In fact, since power is speed times force, it would be complementary. If you just walked down the line from there to strength, hey, same thing, if you get faster, that's gonna aid in strength, because force is mass times acceleration. So if you improve acceleration, you're con- contributing to strength. Same thing with power. So speed, power, and strength are generally very complementary. You can absolutely train all three of those goals at the same time and have no issues. Getting into hypertrophy-Now we've got a little bit of distinction. If you're gonna train strength and hypertrophy, as we talked about in that episode, at the base those are gonna be complementary. You add on some muscle, you're gonna get stronger. You start training for strength, it's probably gonna help you add on some muscle mass. (smacks lips) As you get to the end of that spectrum, the overlap between the two starts to go away, such that if you truly wanted to maximize strength above everything else, if you continue to train for hypertrophy as well, that's going to take too many resources out of your recovery bin and you won't be able to do that. The inverse would also be the same. Right? If you're training to maximize strength, you wouldn't be able to put enough volume on to get sufficient hypertrophy. So, if you wanted to then combine speed with hypertrophy, you're going farther away from each other, which means there's going to be more and more distraction. So the hypertrophy training would cause a ton of fatigue. You wouldn't be able to go at max speed for your speed or power strength, so you're gonna be compromising those results. Now, speed training won't compromise your hypertrophy training because it's non-fatiguing. Right? And so, boom, here we have a little bit of an interference effect one way, but probably not the other. Let's move down the spectrum one more time and get into endurance. We won't go through all th- of these things, but you- you're getting the idea here. Oh, a little bit of high intensity intervals? Okay, cool. Now, would that compromise my speed, power, or strength? Probably, because there's a little bit of residual fatigue, uh, if the volume was low enough, then you'd be fine. All you're worried about there is not necessarily like some sort of cellular mechanism. It's just simple fatigue. It is amount of energy expenditure versus is that compromising my recovery to come back? Would those first three or four though, speed, power, strength, interfere with your ability to elevate your anaerobic capacity? Probably not, uh, almost surely. In fact, if you look at any of the literature on endurance training, you will see that speed, power, and strength almost always improve endurance. Right? Endurance training added on top of strength can be detrimental, can have a neutral effect, but generally doesn't help one get stronger by adding additional conditioning, unless you're so unfit you can't get through the volume needed in the strength training. Right? One more example here wh- so we don't drag this out too far. In the case of something like I wanna lose fat, well hey, we don't have to worry about interference. It doesn't really matter. If you're fatigued for your hypertrophy session, not a big deal. We're just trying to get some work done. If your hypertrophy session fatigued you from your conditioning, it's cool, 'cause you got the work done, so you don't have to worry about it so much. Um, so really kind of depends on the actual goal, and what you wanna pay attention to is actually what are the chances of overlap, which means like what are the- the adaptations you get physiologically that cross over from one to the other, and then what are the ones that are actually gonna start interfering? In fact, I have in my, uh, in my class I have this giant matrix chart of interference effect going from adaptations through a whole bunch of systems, everything from like handling pH, to lymphatic drainage, to bone mineral density, et cetera. You can walk through these whole things and say which ones actually have a positive effect, which ones have a massive positive effect, and then which ones actually have a little bit of an interference. And, um, perhaps if you guys are nice enough we could throw that into a newsletter or something, some- some PDF or something to-

   24. AHAndrew Huberman33:55

       I think that would be immensely valuable. I think some of that more extensive information when it's laid out in grid form like that, um, would be really useful.

   25. AGAndy Galpin34:02

       Y- it's easier to contend with, yeah.

   26. AHAndrew Huberman34:02

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

   27. AGAndy Galpin34:04

       (laughs) .

   28. AHAndrew Huberman34:04

       So we- we- we-

   29. AGAndy Galpin34:05

       I didn't say we'd do it. I said perhaps.

   30. AHAndrew Huberman34:07

       I- I think it's a great idea. Um, I think it's a terrific idea. Uh, the idea that items closer on- to each other on the list of those nine different adaptations are going to be easier to achieve in parallel than items further apart makes perfect sense. And what I heard was that there's a- a few caveats that might seem minor, but they- but they're actually quite important, such as anything that is relatively low intensity and doesn't impede recovery can probably be included as a parallel goal. So, um, some speed work in conjunction with some long duration cardio work, for instance.
6. 36:13 – 37:06

   AG1 (Athletic Greens)

   1. AHAndrew Huberman36:13

      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.

7. 37:06 – 48:02

   Physical Goal “Bins”, Specificity

   1. AHAndrew Huberman37:06

      I'm going to take the liberty of assuming that most people fall into one of either three bins in terms of their goals. Again, most people. Certainly, there are gonna be people that lie outside these, um, bins. I think if you polled 100 people, or 100,000, or a million people as to what their major goals were in working out, they'd say, as you so nicely, uh, listed out s- before, aesthetic changes, functionality, and longevity. But that one in three really kind of sit higher than most people would like to perhaps even admit. They wanna look good, which usually means they want to lose some fat, gain some muscle in specific places.

   2. AGAndy Galpin37:48

      Yeah.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman37:48

      I realize there are folks out there who want to gain a lot of muscle-

   4. AGAndy Galpin37:50

      Yeah.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman37:50

      ... just muscle everywhere. But, I think most people would like to have a little more shape here, or a little more, um, muscle there to either balance out their aesthetic or to accentuate certain parts of their physique, and they would probably like to shave off some subcutaneous fat, although there are those exceptionally lean people out there, um, and they exist too. I think it would be gain muscle in specific places, lose fat, and do it in a way that also provides some boost to their healthspan and longevity. I would say that, that might even be 50% of people out there. Again, I'm taking the liberty of, of guesstimating. Another bin I would venture is interested in getting stronger and putting on more muscle. Certainly, there are a number of people that are interested in doing that, and that could even be more muscle all over, or more muscle with some, um, accentuation to certain areas where they happen to be weaker, or less, less developed as it were. And then the third bin would be people that really enjoy cardiovascular work. Oh, I should say the second bin probably care about their longevity-

   6. AGAndy Galpin38:58

      Mm-hmm.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman38:58

      ... also, but it's not really foremost. They're like, "Yeah, well, you know, I feel great now and I'll live to, you know, I'll live to be whatever, but I only want to do it if I get that much muscle," right? (laughs)

   8. AGAndy Galpin39:08

      (laughs)

   9. AHAndrew Huberman39:08

      We know these kinds of folks. I mean-

   10. AGAndy Galpin39:09

       I, uh-

   11. AHAndrew Huberman39:10

       Yeah, I don't want this-

   12. AGAndy Galpin39:10

       ... I run a poll in my class every year when I ask, like, "Why, you guys all lift?" And of course, like, I make them put their hand up. I'm like, "You guys are in my class. You're gonna put your hand up if, let you lift weights." And then I ask them, like, "Why do you train?" And like health is, longterm health is, like, on the list and they all, like, uh, I'm like, "Any of you that selected health are liars." Like, "You're 20 to 25. You are not exercising for health. You are exercising 'cause you wanna look a certain way or get stronger." Once you get past that undergraduate age, though, (laughs) the actual desire to live longer and better actually becomes pretty real.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman39:42

       Yeah, I think that there are people who want to feel better. They, they know that-

   14. AGAndy Galpin39:45

       Definitely.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman39:45

       ... exercise and the, the results from exercise can make them feel better. But yeah, that second bin tends to be more focused on the aesthetic change, u- it seems, or being strong. And then the third category I think are people, um, I know a lot of f- folks like this, who really enjoy what are normally considered endurance type activities. And here, I just wanna highlight again what you so beautifully illustrated in previous episodes, that you can gain a lot of endurance even using weights or machines.

   16. AGAndy Galpin40:09

       Definitely.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman40:09

       It just depends on how you use them, right?

   18. AGAndy Galpin40:11

       Absolutely.

   19. AHAndrew Huberman40:11

       It's not about the, the exercise. It's about how you perform them and et cetera. Br- and you, again, beautifully provided all those details as to how to create endurance regardless of equipment standards, et cetera. But that third category seemed to be people who enjoy running, cycling, swimming, uh, hiking, dancing, um, activities that they can do for long periods of time that often will involve some sort of, um, skill that is based on improving motor patterns. So maybe not so much stride, but, um, certainly for people that are, really love tennis.

   20. AGAndy Galpin40:44

       Yeah.

   21. AHAndrew Huberman40:45

       People that, um, l- love a sport like golf, right? Or they wanna be able to not just walk the-

   22. AGAndy Galpin40:49

       Pick a ball, yeah.

   23. AHAndrew Huberman40:49

       ... you know, they want to walk the 18 holes, they want, they want to have a great golf swing, et cetera. I'm not a golf player, so forgive me if my nomenclature is off.

   24. AGAndy Galpin40:56

       Golfer.

   25. AHAndrew Huberman40:56

       So I would say there are three bin.

   26. AGAndy Galpin40:57

       Golfer.

   27. AHAndrew Huberman40:57

       Yeah, golfer. So they're-

   28. AGAndy Galpin40:58

       You don't play golf like that.

   29. AHAndrew Huberman40:59

       Oh, got it. You don't play golf, okay.

   30. AGAndy Galpin40:59

       Well, you play golf. You wouldn't call a golf player. (laughs)
8. 48:02 – 1:04:33

   Tool: #2: Identify Your “Defender”, Quadrant System, “Drop Everything and…”

   1. AGAndy Galpin48:02

      is about. Great. So now that we've covered I think as much as we need to regarding assessing and choosing a goal, I wanna get back to this idea of identifying your defender. So you really need to think carefully about what is stopping you from hitting those goals. And so you're forecasting a little bit. You're also going back into your own personal history, right? Do you have history of knee pain?... do you have a history of working too much? Uh, do you have a history of a lot of travel? Do you have a history of getting sick a lot? What are these things that are happening that are gonna stop you from hitting your goal? Um, a couple of examples I've already laid out, so we don't need to go too much longer here. But, in the case of somebody who is in maybe, uh, bin A, right? Which is, I wanna lose some fat, maybe gain a little bit of muscle. Okay, what's stopping you from the strength and conditioning side? Is it the fact that you can't train consistent enough? Is it a fact that when you go to train, you don't know what to do? Is it a fact that when you go to train, you train your ass off and you're not getting results? Okay, great. All three of these different scenarios are going to result in different programs, because they have different reasons you're failing. And that is really critical. Instead of just going, "I want a fat loss program," and picking one up off the internet, it may not actually be addressing the point of failure for you. So the sooner you can choose your programs, based on why you're failing, the sooner you'll start getting results. So you have to run a little bit of a critical analysis there, and it can be, um, you know, something scientific, and it could be a measurement. And it also could just be you thinking about, you've tried this in the past and why didn't it work? "It wasn't that interesting." Okay, tell me more about why it wasn't interesting. "Oh, I just, I'm not really into machines, and that's all I had." Okay, great. Or, "I, I loved it, I loved the gym I was at and I was getting results, but it was so far away." Okay, interesting. Why did you stop before? Why didn't it work? Or, if it did work in the past, amazing. Let's go back to something similar, but has your life changed at all? Is there anything different about now than when it worked three years ago? Yes, no? If not, maybe we run it right back. If it is, okay, we're gonna sort of predict those things. And you wanna work, um... effectively what I'm saying is, throughout this entire 10 step process is going to be, you wanna make sure that there are the non-negotiables that are in your life that you know are going to be ahead of your fitness program. And you wanna work with those things, not against them, right? 'Cause life will win. When it comes to your children, when it comes to your job, life is going to win. You're gonna have to give up something. It's gonna take some hard work. But we wanna fight the right battles for most people, right? Even for our professional athletes. We get this all the time, it's just like they have nothing else to do but train, right? Andy like, "Whoa, hold on now," they're getting traded, they have agents to deal with, they may not have a contract, they have families to... blah, blah, blah. U- uh, think life will get in the way, I promise. And so you wanna fight the battles that you can win, not ones that you're going to lose. And so that's really what this game is about. So if the battle is, "Hey, my job is super hectic." Okay, great. We're gonna come up with a different strategy that's more flexible maybe. Uh, I'm still gonna hold you to the fire, I'm not gonna be easier on you, but we're just not going to try to set up a situation where you have to do this workout Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Because you know your job is on the road and you're the... provide all the, the, you know, income for your family and your child- okay, whatever the thing is, right? Um, that's what we really wanna identify. So when I say identify your defenders, you need to run a little bit of a critical analysis on this. And a, a little bit of a tool I'll use for this, uh, is a modification of another system I stole from Kenny Kane, which is what we call the quadrant system. So, you can imagine everything in life goes into one of four buckets. All right? Now, bucket one I'm just gonna call business. And this is anything to do with your job, income, sort of all those things. Bucket two is relationships. So, again, this could be family or love li- like anything that we would call relationships. Social connection, purpose, benev- anything right there. Bucket three is your fitness, and bucket four is your recovery. So one of the first steps we take is we walk through this and we say, "All right, you have 10 points total and you get to distribute these 10 points across the four areas." So not 10 each, you get 10 total. Andy as we walk through and we say, "Right now, where are you giving your points?" And, and we could do this right now for you if you'd like, or I could make up a, a scenario. Do you wanna do it?

   2. AHAndrew Huberman52:49

      Sure.

   3. AGAndy Galpin52:50

      Great. So Andrew, uh, right now in the last month, um, if you had 10 points total in those four categories, um, wh- where would you be distributing the most points? Which category and how many points would that be?

   4. AHAndrew Huberman53:03

      Business w- my work.

   5. AGAndy Galpin53:05

      Business, work, job, sort of all those things.

   6. AHAndrew Huberman53:07

      Right.

   7. AGAndy Galpin53:07

      And how many out of 10?

   8. AHAndrew Huberman53:09

      Which doesn't, I should say, ever quite feel like work. Running a laboratory and doing, uh, the podcast doesn't ever really feel like work in the traditional sense, but it's career, it's-

   9. AGAndy Galpin53:19

      Correct.

   10. AHAndrew Huberman53:19

       ... it's work. It's, it involves relationships, but it certainly doesn't enhance my fitness, um, except of my vocal cords, and, um, and recovery. So, uh, so with those, um, notes there, uh, I would say, um, four or four to five.

   11. AGAndy Galpin53:39

       You pick.

   12. AHAndrew Huberman53:40

       Uh, five.

   13. AGAndy Galpin53:40

       Five. Fair. That's the most common number. Five, business five.

   14. AHAndrew Huberman53:45

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

   15. AGAndy Galpin53:47

       You nailed it.

   16. AHAndrew Huberman53:48

       One of the few ways-

   17. AGAndy Galpin53:49

       All right.

   18. AHAndrew Huberman53:49

       ... in which I've been accused of being normal.

   19. AGAndy Galpin53:51

       (laughs)

   20. AHAndrew Huberman53:51

       I picked five for business.

   21. AGAndy Galpin53:52

       No kidding. What's the next highest and what's that score?

   22. AHAndrew Huberman53:56

       Uh, um, I do invest in relationships. I would say, uh, does it have to be, uh, around, uh, can it be a, uh, a decimal?

   23. AGAndy Galpin54:06

       It has to be a whole integer, yeah.

   24. AHAndrew Huberman54:07

       Oh, yeah, a whole integer. Um, two.

   25. AGAndy Galpin54:13

       Two? All right, we're seven outta 10 here. So would you say it is fair that you spend roughly two and a half percent of your... it's not necessarily time, it's energy, time, focus, sort of all these things, two and a half times as much on your business as you do in your relationships?

   26. AHAndrew Huberman54:31

       It varies depending on what's going on. Um, it, uh, feels a little skewed in the direction of business, so I might want to adjust to a four-three ratio there.

   27. AGAndy Galpin54:41

       M- maybe not now.

   28. AHAndrew Huberman54:41

       But I think I'm gonna hold to five-

   29. AGAndy Galpin54:43

       Okay.

   30. AHAndrew Huberman54:43

       ... to, um, business relationships and then, but just for sake of example and because, uh, you know, this is, doesn't seem like a, a exceedingly precise measure, it can have some slop.
9. 1:04:33 – 1:05:35

   InsideTracker

   1. AGAndy Galpin1:04:33

   2. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:33

      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%

10. 1:05:35 – 1:10:33

    #3: Goal Timeframe & Life Events; #4: Weekly Training Frequency

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:35

       off.

    2. AGAndy Galpin1:05:36

       Let's move on to the next one, shall we? Number three here is going to be what I call calendar or sort of timeframe. So it's going back a little bit and saying you've decided on this goal, and you've de- identified the defenders. Now we need to come up with a realistic timeframe for how long it's going to take to accomplish that goal. And when you do that, you need to look at your life schedule. And what I mean by that is, do you have important deadlines coming up? Do you have holidays? Do you have a, a trip? Do you have travel? Do your children have something coming up? Um, you need to take all that information, and I literally lay out a calendar, and I write all those dates in a physical calendar first. And the reason I'm suggesting this is you want to work your training backwards around that. As we've been discussing, life will win. If you try to plan a training program that is five days a week, 90 minutes a day, and all of a sudden you look two weeks from now and you realize you've got a grant deadline, and then you've got to take two days to go to Aust-... i- it's just foolish. You're going to fail and then you're gonna quit, and you're gonna be like, "Man, again, my training program failed." So, you need to figure out what the non-negotiables are in that business quadrant, and just not be foolish. All right? So let's imagine you're going to plot out, say, a 12-week training phase, and you want to ... You've decided on this goal. And then you look and, and you realize, in the middle of this 12-week span, week five is really hectic and chaotic. Or you realize that this is a quarter in which something important is due. Maybe we want to either adjust the goal, or what we really do in this step is going on to actually step number four, which is choose the number of days per week you can exercise, and the length, uh, in terms of amount of time you can truly afford to train. I would rather you underestimate that than overestimate it. So, uh, you, again, you look at the calendar. You put all these non-negotiables, the deadlines you cannot move in the calendar, and then you say, "Look, based on this, realistically, I can conservatively train three days a week for 60 minutes total, and that includes the time I walk into the gym, my warm-up, my down regulation breathing at the end, and then me getting back, either in the shower and back." Because really now, it's maybe 90 minutes by the time you traveled, you transitioned, you picked back up on work, you showered, you ate, et cetera. That time just runs away from you, and all of a sudden it was a two-and-a-half-hour thing, even though it was a 45-minute workout. So you really need to figure that thing out. If you're a few weeks in and you realize, "Oh, I actually have a little more time than I thought," you can always train more. You can do another thing, you can add it. But what you don't want to do is set up a program that is requiring you to do certain exercises on one days or certain styles of training on another, and then you constantly miss one of those days. Uh, I, I, I thought I could do four days a week, but one day a week something's getting pulled out. That's just gonna keep you off schedule, it's gonna make you feel like a failure, and you're going to run into problems with your training. So schedule three if you are sure you can get three, and if there's an extra day, we can always do other fun stuff. All right? So that's really step three and four. Figure out your life events over the course of this time. How many days a week can you train, and then how long in terms of minutes per workout? Notice, we haven't selected a single exercise yet. We haven't worried about how heavy, rest intervals, all those modifiable variables. You don't need to pick those later. First, where are we going? Second, how are we going to get there, which is the quadrant and identifying of defenders. And now the third is, what are the restrictions I need to place on myself in terms of program design, based on how often and how long I can work out? That is going to allow you to go back to some of the previous episodes and go, "Man, you gave us all kinds of ideas. How do I know which one to choose?" This is your answer. You're going to choose based upon the limitations of time and frequency. So if you've already said we're in... Let's imagine we're in bucket A or bucket C, it doesn't matter, and you go, "Look, the most I can afford with where I'm at, with what's going on in my life, is three days a week," well, we automatically know we're gonna have to start training, choosing a training style that's limited to three days a week. Don't even worry about the four or five day stuff. Those are off the table. And now we're au- we, so we've placed restrictions. It kind of goes back to that concept of, I think it's one of your podcast guests, Jocko, right? And this is like, "Hey, structure gives us actually some freedom." So by creating some restrictions here, we're a little more free to go, "I only actually have to choose between A and B," rather than sitting down and going, "Man, there's all ... I'm 20 hours into this exercise podcast thing and I, there's so many options which one to pick." Well, you create a little bit of restriction, and now it's easier to go, "Oh, my only option is A or B," and there we go. So that's number four. That's three and four.

11. 1:10:33 – 1:18:20

    #5: Exercise Selection, Progression

    1. AGAndy Galpin1:10:33

       At that point, once we're good there, now what you want to do is go to step number five, which is actually select your exercises or your movements. And this can be as simple as selecting, like, uh, you know, a kettlebell swing, or running, or swimming. It could be your entire exercise mode. What you want to do with exercise selection here is make sure that you're balancing those exercises across the whole week, not within necessarily every workout. So if you have four days a week, five days a week, you want to look at the exercise selection and say, "Okay, I need to have somewhat of a reasonable balance between movement patterns, or muscle groups, or front and back, side to side," however you're thinking of it, just across that week. Right? So again, say we're on a three-day program and we're in either of the buckets, any of the buckets really, and we say, "Okay, great. Hmm. Maybe it's not ideal if all I select is cycling every day. That's not a lot of balance. I don't notice any ... There's no upper body work there. There's no torso work. There's no other position, so maybe I'm gonna really focus on cycling. So I will do only cycling two days a week, but that third day, I need to pick something for the other movement areas." And that's gonna make sure you stay in a reasonable balance. Uh, if you have an exercise that you like, great. If you have an exercise you have access to. Again, maybe the gym is a giant pain in the ass, and so you can say, "Look, it's too far away. The closest one is 45 minutes there and back, so maybe I'm gonna restrict myself to only kettlebell and bands and running, because I can do those in my house." Awesome. We've actually created some freedom because we gave ourselves some restriction, and now we just have to figure out, "How am I going to give some movement patterns somewhat balanced across my three days?" So really, when it comes to exercise choice, it is selecting the patterns that you know how to execute, giving yourself, again, somewhat of a balance between the muscles and the joints and the movement patterns, making sure that you are specifically targeting...... any muscle group or movement that you want. So, making sure you, you wanna improve muscle size in your glutes, you better make sure some of the exercises you're doing at least one day a week, you feel it in your actual glutes. So, you can check that box. It doesn't have to be every exercise. It probably shouldn't. It doesn't even have to be every single day. But make sure it's checked off somewhere on that list. And then the last one is, is there a strategy in which you can progress it? So, if you're like, "I'm just gonna do body weight exercises," okay, great. Well, how are you going to progress those? In the case of, like, body weight, it's, it's really hard to add load. Maybe you can put a weight vest on or something, but then maybe you don't have that, or that's an extra thing, or that can only go so far. So, what's my progression strategy gonna be? Well, in this case, maybe you just increase the complexity by going from two legs, like say, a body weight squat, to a single-leg squat. Or you just increase repetitions. Or you increase time you're gonna hold it. Whatever. My point is, your progression strategy will be based upon the restrictions that you placed, um, based on availability and, and things like that. The last thing I always recommend here in terms of exercise progression to make sure that you can continue to do these things while lowering your risk of injury, both in the short term and long term, is to progress your exercise complexity in this, this fashion. So, make sure, number one, you can do the exercise properly with assistance. So, let's imagine a scenario where we're going to try to squat. So, uh, give yourself ... Put your hands on a bench or something like that. Now, can you execute that squat perfectly with assistance? So, you're holding onto something. Okay, great. If you can't, then don't progress past that. Don't go now and do a barbell back squat if you can't do it correctly when you had assistance. But let's assume most people can do that. Okay, great. Now, you can move on to the next step, which is, can you do it well without assistance? So, this would be body weight only. Check. Cool. We're good there. Okay, now you can go ahead and move on. Can you do it well with an added eccentric load? So, in this particular case, if I, uh, if we're learning to squat, we can do it well when I hold onto something. That's great. Okay, now I can do it well with just my body weight. Now, if I put a little bit of weight on, whether it's a kettlebell in the front like a goblet squat, or dumbbells to the side, or whatever you want to do, can I lower it and go all the way down and stay in perfect position? If you can do that, great. You're allowed to go to the next step, which is, can you hold it isometrically? So, can you go all the way down and then hold that bottom position? What you don't want to do is start adding load or speed or fatigue if you're going down to the bottom position of the movement and you are out of control. We really wanna avoid this. So, I want you to show me you can go down and you can lower the weight under control. You can hold it in that position under control. If we're clear there, now we can add the concentric portion, right? You can now go ahead and you can lower it, you can hold that position of most danger, and now you can move up at whatever speed we want. We are all good there. Once you can show me those things, you can add the last two steps, which are now speed, if you choose to, and the last one, which is fatigue. Right? I would really discourage people from doing exercises to fatigue, especially with a moderate or high load, unless you can promise me you can do these first six steps. If you can, you can basically go hog wild with your training and your chances of injury are, are very low. Again, both acute injury as well as long-term injury, which is just sort of like my joints ache and all of a sudden my shoulder hurts, and, you know, things like that. Um, that's really what I'm looking for. And once you're clear there, you can train pretty hard.

Episode duration: 3:06:07