Optimize Your Exercise Program with Science-Based Tools | Jeff Cavaliere

Andrew Huberman 0:00 (Upbeat music) Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today, my guest is Jeff Cavaliere. Jeff Cavaliere holds a Master of Science in Physical Therapy and is a certified strength and conditioning specialist. He did his training at the University of Connecticut Storrs, one of the top five programs in the world in physical therapy and sports medicine. I discovered Jeff Cavaliere over 10 years ago from his online content. His online content includes information about how to train for strength, how to train for hypertrophy, which is muscle growth, how to train for endurance, as well as how to rehabilitate injuries, to avoid muscular imbalances, nutrition and supplementation. I've always found his content to be incredibly science-based, incredibly clear, sometimes surprising, and always incredibly actionable. It is therefore not surprising that he has one of the largest online platforms for fitness, nutrition, supplementation, and injury rehabilitation. Jeff has also worked with an enormous number of professional athletes and has served as head physical therapist and assistant strength coach for the New York Mets. Again, the content that Jeff Cavaliere has posted online has been so immensely useful to me over the years that I was absolutely thrilled to get the chance to sit down with him and ask him about everything from how to train in terms of how to split up the body parts that you train across the week, how to integrate strength training and endurance training, when to stretch, how to stretch. Indeed, we talked about nutrition. We talk a bit about supplementation. We talk about how to really avoid creating imbalances in muscle and in neural control over muscle. So one thing that's really wonderful about Jeff is he really has an understanding of not just how muscles and bones and tendons and ligaments work together, but how the nervous system interfaces with those. We talked about the mental side of training, including when to bring specific concentration to the muscles that you're training and when to think more about how to move weights through space and think more about the movements overall. I'm certain that you'll find the conversation that we held to be immensely useful and informative for your fitness practices and also for how you mentally approach fitness in general and how to set up a lifelong fitness practice, one that will give you the strength that you desire, one that will give you the aesthetic results that you desire, one that will set you up for endurance and cardiovascular health, basically an overall fitness program. I really feel this is where Jeff Cavaliere shines above and beyond so many of the other PTs and fitness so-called influencers that are out there. Again, everything is grounded in science, everything is clear, and everything is actionable. And while we do cover an enormous amount of information during today's episode, if you want to dive even deeper into that information, you can go to athleanx.com, where you'll find some of Jeff's programs. You can also find him at Athlean-X on YouTube. There, you will find videos, for instance, like the how to repair or heal from lower back pain, something that I actually followed directly long before I ever met Jeff, has over 32 million views, and that is not by accident. It is because the protocols there, again, are surprising and actionable. They relieved my back pain very quickly without surgery. So I'm (laughs) immensely grateful for that content, and it extends into everything from, again, hypertrophy, endurance, and strength training, and so on. Again, it's athleanx.com as the website, Athlean-X on YouTube, and also Athlean-X

Andrew Huberman 3:27 on Instagram. The Huberman Lab Podcast is proud to announce that we've partnered with Momentous Supplements. We've done that for several reasons. First of all, the quality of their supplements is exceedingly high. Second of all, we wanted to have a location where you could find all of the supplements discussed on the Huberman Lab Podcast in one easy-to-find place. You can now find that place at livemomentous.com/huberman. In addition, Momentous Supplements ship internationally, something that a lot of other supplement companies simply do not do. So that's terrific whether or not you live in the US or you live abroad. Right now, not all of the supplements that we discuss on the Huberman Lab Podcast are listed, but that catalog of supplements is being expanded very rapidly, and a good number of them that we've talked about, some of the more prominent ones for sleep and focus, and other aspects of mental and physical health are already there. Again, you can find them at livemomentous.com/huberman. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero-cost-to-consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Athletic Greens, now called AG1. I started taking AG1 way back in 2012, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast. The reason I started taking AG1 and the reason I still take AG1 twice a day is that it covers all of my foundational health needs for mental health, physical health, and performance. As I mentioned earlier, it has vitamins and minerals that cover any deficiencies I might have in my diet. It also has probiotics, and the probiotics are key for supporting the so-called gut microbiome. The gut microbiome are trillions of little microbacteria that live in our gut, from our throat all the way down to the base of our gut, that support everything from our immune system to our hormone health to the so-called gut-brain axis. That is, our gut and our brain are in direct communication with one another in ways that support our mood, our ability to think, and overall brain health. 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, which make it very easy to mix up Athletic Greens while you're on the road, and they'll give you a year's supply of vitamin D3 K2. Vitamin D3 and K2 are essential for an enormous number of aspects of your mental health, physical health, and performance by impacting things like hormone regulation, calcium regulation, and cardiovascular health. Again, go to athleticgreens.com/huberman to claim that special offer. 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The company was founded by two all-American swimmers from Stanford, and everything about ROKA eyeglasses and sunglasses is made with performance in mind. That said, the aesthetics of ROKA eyeglasses and sunglasses is superb. I've spent a lifetime working on the biology of the visual system, and I can tell you that your visual system has to contend with an enormous number of challenges in order to be able to see clearly. ROKA understands this and has developed their eyeglasses and sunglasses in a manner such that when you move from, say, a shady area To a brightly lit area, or when you are in different lit environments indoors, you can always see with crystal clarity. And they won't slip off if you sweat. In fact, they were originally designed for exercise, you can wear them while running or cycling, but they have a terrific aesthetic. 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Andrew Huberman 8:38 Jeff, such a pleasure for me to have you here.

Jeff Cavaliere 8:41 I'm glad to be here. It's amazing.

Andrew Huberman 8:42 Uh, I'm a longtime consumer of your content. I've learned a tremendous amount about fitness, uh, both in the weight room, cardio, nutrition, things that I've applied for over a decade. So for me, this is particularly meaningful, and my goal here is really to ask a bunch of questions to which I'm interested in the answers, but also, uh, for which I know the audience is really curious about. So one of your mantras is, uh, you know, if you want to look like an athlete, train like an athlete, and I think that's something really special that sets aside what you do from what a lot of other, um, very well-qualified people do. And in terms of the use of weights and resistance, whether or not it's body weight or weights in the gym or pulleys versus cardio, y- you know, in terms of overall health, aesthetics and athleticism, is there a way that you could point to, you know, the idea that maybe people should be doing, you know, 50% resistance training and 50% cardio! Maybe it's 70/30, maybe it's 30/70, and, and here I'm talking about the typical person who would like to maintain or maybe even, um, add some muscle mass-

Jeff Cavaliere 9:54 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 9:54 ... probably in particular areas for most people-

Jeff Cavaliere 9:56 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 9:56 ... as opposed to just overall mass, although we'll talk about that later, and people who want to maintain a relatively low body fat percentage and be in good cardiovascular health. What's the sort of contour of a basic program that anybody could think about as a starting place?

Jeff Cavaliere 10:10 Um, I, I think it's like a 60/40 split, which would be leaning towards, uh, weight training, so, you know, strength and, and, and, uh, and then, you know, the conditioning aspect would be about 40%. So if you look at it over the course of a training week, I mean, five days in the gym would be a great task, and obviously not in the gym, it could be done at home, but three days strength training, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, conditioning, Tuesday, Thursday, you know, two days. It's a, it's a pretty easy roundabout way to split that up. Of course, depending upon training goals, and as you said, the aesthetic goals, like that will shift dramatically, but if you wanted to see the benefits of both, that's probably the, the effective dose for strength training and the effective dose for conditioning at the bare minimal level. Again, being a much better performer conditioning-wise, you're going to want to do more than that.

Andrew Huberman 10:55 And in terms of the duration of those workouts, what's your suggestion? I, I've been weight training for about 30 years, running for about 30 years, um, and mainly for health, a- and have found that if I work hard in the gym or at resistance training for more than 60 minutes or so, it's very hard for me to recover. I start getting colds, I start getting weaker from workout to workout, but amazingly, at least to me, if I keep those workouts to about 10 minutes, 10 minutes of warmup and 50, five-zero-

Jeff Cavaliere 11:24 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 11:25 ... minutes or so of really hard work for resistance training and I keep the cardiovascular work to about 30 to 45 minutes, I feel great, and I seem to make some progress at least some place in the workout from workout to workout.

Jeff Cavaliere 11:39 Yeah, I mean, it's, those are good numbers, 'cause those are the kind of numbers that we usually preach. We try to keep our workouts to an hour or less if possible. Now depending upon the split that you're following, if you're on a total body split, there's just going to be more that has to be done in a given amount of time. Um, that, and again, if you're training primarily for strength, that could prolong the workout 'cause of longer rest times in between sets. But in general, when you're not focused on that one aspect but the overall health picture, then...... you can get the job done in, in under, in under an hour. And again, I always say, on top of if, if you want to look like an athlete, train like an athlete, is you can either train long or you can train hard, but you can't do both. And I really believe that the focus for me, I have a busy life, I have a lot of other things that I do, believe it or not, and it's like, I, I want to go hard and I want to go get out. And I find that my body also responds to that, and I think a lot of guys' bodies respond to that. And particularly as you start to get older, I think it's the, it's the length of the workout that actually causes more problems than the intensity of what you're doing, particularly if you're warmed up properly, like you said. I've found personally that my warmup has had to become more of an integral part of my, my workout than it ever has before. I never... I could get in the gym when I was 20 and I'm going right over, I'm doing the one set, two sets, I'm in, and I'm ready to go, you know? And I'd never do another workout warmup set for any of the other exercise I do the rest of the day. Um, that's not, that's not true anymore, you know? And I found that as long as I'm willing to sort of give myself a little bit of a warmup, the intensity is not what bothers me. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm very much in control of the weights that I use and, and it doesn't bother me, but if I start to go pretty long, I start to feel achy or I start to have problems. So again, depending upon age, that also plays a factor in the length. But again, I think everybody can achieve, on, on a standard program, can achieve the results that they want within an

Jeff Cavaliere 13:27 hour.

Andrew Huberman 13:28 In terms of splits, you mentioned splits.

Jeff Cavaliere 13:30 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 13:30 And so for those who aren't familiar with this, uh, term, "splits," it's really which body parts are you training on which days. Um, seems like al- almost everybody follows a weekly workout schedule.

Jeff Cavaliere 13:40 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 13:40 Although the body, of course, doesn't care-

Jeff Cavaliere 13:41 Right. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 13:41 ... about the week, right?

Jeff Cavaliere 13:42 Exactly.

Andrew Huberman 13:42 There's no reason to think that once every seven days-

Jeff Cavaliere 13:44 Right. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 13:44 ... or twice every seven days makes sense physiologically.

Jeff Cavaliere 13:46 Right.

Andrew Huberman 13:46 It's just the body doesn't work that... But that's the way life is structured. Um, I've seen you discuss, you know, three days a week, whole body workouts.

Jeff Cavaliere 13:56 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 13:56 Uh, I've heard of splits like a pushing one day, uh, pulling another day, legs another day, a day off, repeat. I mean, there's so many variations on this.

Jeff Cavaliere 14:05 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 14:05 What are some general themes that we can throw out there, and in order to avoid the, the huge matrix of possibilities? You have some wonderful content that points those, and we will cap, uh, in our caption show notes, we'll link out to some of those-

Jeff Cavaliere 14:17 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 14:17 ... that, uh, different ways to design splits. But in terms of giving people a logic of how to think about splitting up body parts, uh, what's governing the, the split? What, what are the rules and the logic that dictate a split?

Jeff Cavaliere 14:29 Uh, for me, the first rule is, will you stick to it, right? Like if you... 'cause there are split... I don't, I don't particularly like full-body splits, and I was actually talking to Jesse about that the other day. Like, I don't necessarily like to have to train everything. Now, of course, the volumes will come down per muscle group, but if you don't like to do that, and you actually don't look forward to your workout because you're dreading having to do everything and feeling maybe too fatigued by the time your workout's over, or the fact that those generally do take a little bit longer and don't fit into your schedule, I don't care how effective the split is. A split not done is not effective. So you need to find one that fits. So maybe you go into an alternative option, like a, um, a push/pull/legs, like you mentioned, and that could be done either one cycle through the week on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday split, or it could be twice in a week, so you're actually training six times, you know, where, where you repeat it, you know, pull/push/legs, pull/push/legs, or, or, you know, uh, you know, however you want to do it, with, with either a day off in between the three days or at the end of the six days. Um, and again, that actually impacts your schedule. I've broken that down before where it's, you know, if you put it in between the three days, it's good because you're giving yourself an extra rest day in between, but it starts to shift that day off every week as we wrap around. So for those guys that were choosing that seven-day schedule out of convenience in our heads, you know, it starts to mess with that off day. So others like to just keep it predictably, let's say, on a Sunday, and train six days in a row. Um, but that's a, but that's a, a better way to maybe group similar muscle actions together, which I think I, I definitely prefer that, because if I'm going to be training, you know, pulling movements, at least there, there's a synergy between them and I feel like I'm looking to achieve one goal that day. Um, and then, I mean, quite honestly, you can go back to the bro split days, and those, those still work effectively. There's a reason why they worked in the past. Like, I think that science shows that there's smarter ways to do them these days. Like, you can, you can come back and hit a related muscle. So you could do, let's say, biceps on one day, and then come back two days later and do back, realizing again, synergy between the, the exercises there. Your biceps are gonna get restimulated again. So you could figure out ways to make that work, but the thing that I think is, is effective there is that tends to be one of the ones that people like the most, because they can go in, they get their pump, they feel good, the... it's, it's pretty solely focused on one muscle group, so-

Andrew Huberman 16:51 Is that the definition of a bro split, one, one-

Jeff Cavaliere 16:54 One muscle group a day, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 16:55 I see.

Jeff Cavaliere 16:55 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 16:55 So it's very much geared towards strength and aesthetics, really maximizing-

Jeff Cavaliere 16:59 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 17:00 ... you know, chest one day.

Jeff Cavaliere 17:00 Probably, probably more, more aesthetics than strength, yeah. Yeah, you're just-

Andrew Huberman 17:03 Hence the bro-

Jeff Cavaliere 17:04 The bro, right.

Andrew Huberman 17:05 ... the bro name.

Jeff Cavaliere 17:05 Right. Yeah, but, but again, like-

Andrew Huberman 17:06 Yeah.

Jeff Cavaliere 17:06 ... you know, and here I am, a science guy, and I, I could appreciate the benefits of a bro split, especially... 'cause again, like what... to what, to what end? You know, who, who's, who's goal are we, are we trying to achieve here, theirs or, or ours? You know, like, I mean, if, if I'm applying my standards and my goals, or even, like, athletic ideals, but they just want to get in shape, then it's perfectly fine to, to do a, to do a bro split in that instance, if you're sticking to it again and you're seeing the results that you want to see from it. But they're able to, you know, really keep their focus on one muscle. They get to focus on, you know... Like, look, a lot of times people struggle with the, the way a, uh, an exercise feels until their second or third set. Like, they don't have that proprioceptive ability to kind of lock in on an exercise. So spending a few not only sets in the same, you know, exercise, but then doing another exercise for the same muscle group helps them to dial in a little bit better and get more out of their training.

Andrew Huberman 17:59 Yeah, that raises a really i- interesting and I think important question. Early on, when I started, um, resistance training, which was when I was 16 in high school, I...... got in touch with, and I was learning from Mike Mentzer, right?

Jeff Cavaliere 18:10 Me too.

Andrew Huberman 18:11 The, the, uh... So, interesting.

Jeff Cavaliere 18:12 Me too. That's crazy.

Andrew Huberman 18:13 Yeah. When... And Mike was very helpful. Uh, very, very helpful. We got to be friendly. I want to say-

Jeff Cavaliere 18:17 Except, I just read his book.

Andrew Huberman 18:17 (laughs)

Jeff Cavaliere 18:17 I didn't get a chance to meet him-

Andrew Huberman 18:18 Well, I-

Jeff Cavaliere 18:19 ... so I'm jealous right now (laughs) .

Andrew Huberman 18:19 Well, I, I... Back then, no internet. I, um, you know, I paid by Western Union type thing to, to send him-

Jeff Cavaliere 18:25 Right.

Andrew Huberman 18:25 ... some money.

Jeff Cavaliere 18:26 From the back of the magazine (laughs) .

Andrew Huberman 18:27 And then he got on the phone with me, and-

Jeff Cavaliere 18:29 Yeah (laughs) .

Andrew Huberman 18:29 ... and my mother at the time was like, "Why is this grown man calling the house?"

Jeff Cavaliere 18:32 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 18:32 And he gave me a, a very straightforward split, which was shoulders and arms one day. He had me taking two days off, and then training legs-

Jeff Cavaliere 18:39 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 18:39 ... and then two days off, and then chest and back, et cetera, et cetera, yeah.

Jeff Cavaliere 18:41 And, and that, and that's a variation of a bro split too, where you're-

Andrew Huberman 18:44 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Cavaliere 18:44 ... sort of, you know, breaking them down that way. Chest and back or chest and bis, you know?

Andrew Huberman 18:47 Yeah.

Jeff Cavaliere 18:47 Uh-

Andrew Huberman 18:47 And it worked very well for me. I probably would've... Because of my age, I think, and because it was the f- I was untrained, I think it... Largely untrained, I think it would've, uh, grown on, on many different programs. But it worked very well for me. I eventually just, just, uh, made that an every other day thing.

Jeff Cavaliere 19:01 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 19:01 So shoulders and arms, day off, legs, day or two off, 'cause if you hit legs right, at least for me-

Jeff Cavaliere 19:05 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 19:06 ... I'm not training the next day (laughs) .

Jeff Cavaliere 19:08 Right (laughs) .

Andrew Huberman 19:08 Um, and then I'm not doing much of anything athletic the next day. And chest and back, and repeat, and so on. And the reason I found that helpful is I a- a- almost always recovered between workouts. Um, the, the six day a week program of push, pull, legs, push, pull, legs-

Jeff Cavaliere 19:22 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 19:22 ... to me, um, seems excruciating, um, from two standpoints. One is I... At least with my recovery abilities, or lack of recovery abilities, I can't imagine coming back feeling fresh. And the other one is, if I, if I'm in the gym more than four days a week, I really start to fatigue at... About the whole psychological experience of it. Whereas if I'm in there three or four days a week-

Jeff Cavaliere 19:43 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 19:43 ... in other words, if I put a day off in between each workout, I really want to be there.

Jeff Cavaliere 19:48 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 19:48 And I get in there with, with a lot of fire. Um, and I'm also doing other things on the off days. So I think that... I love that you mentioned the, the split that you'll stick to.

Jeff Cavaliere 19:56 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 19:57 And that you can bring the intensity to. Um, because I think that that's really important. I, I sometimes hear about two-a-day training. I've done two-a-day training twice in my lifetime. Both times I got sick two days later.

Jeff Cavaliere 20:07 Yeah, not a surprise.

Andrew Huberman 20:08 That's correlation not causation.

Jeff Cavaliere 20:09 Yeah (laughs) .

Andrew Huberman 20:09 You know? But, um,

Andrew Huberman 20:12 is there ever an instance where two-a-day weight training makes sense for the non-drug assisted, um, typical recovery ability person?

Jeff Cavaliere 20:21 I, I actually... I, I think it makes sense in some scenarios, but it doesn't make sense practically for a lot of people's schedules. So like, if you could break down... Let's say you were gonna do even a, uh, a, you know, a, a, some version of a, of a total body session. Or maybe like you're gonna do a, an upper/lower split, right? You could do an upper workout and do the anterior chain, or the pushing portion of that in one session, and then come back and do the pulling session later on at night, if you had the opportunity to. The thing that you benefit from there is the freshness of focus. Again, like, something in my head sac- is sacrificed by the time you get towards the latter half of whatever workout you're in. To the same point you made before, like, when you start to approach that 50 minutes, an hour, you know, mark, you are either losing focus, you're losing energy, you're losing contractile ability, you're losing something. And if you're relegating whatever it is, the pulling portion of that, to the end of that workout, something suffers. So that, okay, in that... If you realize that's happening, then maybe you switch 'em up the next time you do the workout, where the pulling portion of the upper workout goes first, and then the pushing goes later, so you're at least not just continuing that cycle. But at the same time, if you were able to kind of split them up, you get a chance to kind of take a break, you could have that freshness of focus again, and you could actually get a better effort in. 'Cause again, I think effort drives the results. So if the effort is not compromised, then you should be able to do that. But systemically, is that a problem? And I think that it is a problem for a lot of people. It's just hard to... It's hard to rev the engine up a lot of times, you know, in the day. You know, you warm that thing up once... It's like that car in the winter. You get it going once, you're lucky. Okay, now you got to drive it the rest of the day. But you know, i- i- if you put it in the garage (laughs) and try to start it the next day, i- it's, it's a problem. So, you know, young people can get away with a lot more than, than older people could, you know?

Andrew Huberman 22:08 Well, I've never had a strong recovery quotient, but if I stick to this one day off in between, every once in a while, two days in a row of training, maybe because I have to travel and I want to make sure I get all the workouts in kind of thing-

Jeff Cavaliere 22:19 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 22:19 ... I seem to be okay. I like your example of warming up the car, spoken like a true East Coast, uh, E- East Coaster.

Jeff Cavaliere 22:24 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 22:24 Those of us who are on the West Coast-

Jeff Cavaliere 22:25 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 22:26 ... took a moment there, but, uh, uh, like, we... F- f- folks from the East Coast and the Midwest get it, and certainly from, from Europe.

Andrew Huberman 22:34 In terms of the mixing up of cardiovascular training and resistance training, um, same day, different day, which one should come first, which one c- should come second? If one's g- main goals... Again, everyone listening has different goals, are most people would like to either maintain or gain some muscle. I don't know many people that want to lose muscle.

Jeff Cavaliere 22:56 Right.

Andrew Huberman 22:56 They maintain or gain some muscle, usually in specific locations on their body. Most people would like to be a bit leaner or a lot leaner. There are a few people out there that are either naturally lean or don't want... Or actually just want to gain weight. But assuming that people want to get leaner, put on some muscle, maintain muscle, and want to have a healthy heart and a healthy brain, which basically requires a healthy cardiovascular system, w- how would you incorporate cardiovascular work into the overall weekly regimen?

Jeff Cavaliere 23:23 Um, so again, I, I, I think that the, you know, the bare minimum is probably twice a week in terms of cardiovascular, if you want to have some semblance of cardiovascular conditioning. But I think most people who actually need it more or want to pursue it more than that are gonna need more time to do that. So, um, at some point it can't just be relegated to a day off, or a day off from the, from the weight training workouts. So, at some point it has to occur on the same day, you know? And in that case, I just like to put it... If that is your, not your primary goal but you're looking more for the, just the overall picture, you know, the aesthetics you mentioned, putting muscle on in certain areas, then I would put it at the end of the workout. 'Cause you don't want to, in any way, compromise the weight training w- workout. And as we've sort of referenced a couple times already, the i- the intensity of those workouts is important. And-... we know there's a strength component to those workouts also that is going to, you know, he- be a helpful stimulus for growth. So the conditioning, the cardio, that stuff done prior to any training, you know, strength training workout, is likely going to impair your ability to perform at your best. So unless it's just done for a quick little warmup in the beginning, but then it's not sustained long enough really to be of benefit for cardiovascular conditioning. So I just like to, you know, put that at, at the end, realizing that even if my effort level is lower or my output is lower, if it's still placing a demand on my cardiac output to get that conditioning effect, because I'm fatigued, it still has a demand on my cardiac output. So it's still achieving its goal, but it didn't interfere with my main goal of being able to increase my performance in the gym.

Andrew Huberman 24:58 Got it. And in terms of the form of cardiovascular training, I've seen you, um, do a number of, I have to say, uh, very impressive, uh, high intensity interval type work. So burpee type work or push-ups with, you know, with crunches mixed into them. Anyway, people can see your videos to, to... I didn't describe those, um, in the best way, but, um, rather than, uh, on the treadmill or out jogging for 30, 45 minutes, is that because you prefer higher intensity, um, higher heart rate type, um, training or is it because you live in cold Connecticut, um, and you don't want to be out jogging on the roads in the middle of winter? Um, what-

Jeff Cavaliere 25:35 I, I think all the above. I mean, those are factors, you know, from a personal level, but I think that if, if you are... I- if we could blend function across these realms and not have such a delineation between, "This is my weight training and this is my conditioning," but figure out a way to, to blend them together, I always think that you've, you've got a better opportunity to get that more well-rounded result. And I like to kind of mix up that straight conditioning work and also some of the footwork, you know, drills. Like we have, we, we have some high expectations for guys that come into our programs, like to just do some footwork drills.

Andrew Huberman 26:11 Like ladders.

Jeff Cavaliere 26:12 Like ladders or, or line drills or something. And you know what happens? People become intrigued and interested. They're like, "I never, I haven't tried this since, uh, high school." You know? And they become interested in just the challenge of it, and then as we become almost distracted by the challenge, we're now like finding ourselves conditioning, you know, and, and I always think that's an important part, that sometimes you got to draw people in, um, to f- get... to show them what they might be interested in. And from the output or the effect of it, I just think that when you're able to blend some of, some... you know, still maintain some of that strength training into the exercise, so as you mentioned, let's say I'm doing some kind of a push-up or a burpee, I mean, there is, there is a, um, an anaerobic component to that that is going to be helpful, um, that then... rather than just walking or just jogging. Um, not just, not to say that that isn't an effective means for strict cardiac conditioning. It's a... it's one of the ways that we've had for, you know, centuries, you know, to do it. But I just think that if we can blend it, then it becomes maybe a little bit more interesting and you get some of those crossover benefits and it doesn't become so segmented in terms of what we're trying to do.

Andrew Huberman 27:18 I love the idea of bringing some mental challenge and some desire to improve a skill while conditioning. That's not something that I've thought of before and it, and it's simply because I've overlooked it, but it makes sense because my sister, who's reasonably fit, although I'm always trying to get her to do a bit more-

Jeff Cavaliere 27:31 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 27:32 ... um, she always asks me, you know, "What should I take?" And I'm a, I'm a believer in supplements, so for certain people in certain instances, but I keep telling her, you know, it's... behaviors are going to-

Jeff Cavaliere 27:41 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 27:41 ... and nutrition are going to have the, the greatest outsized positive effect. And she loves things like, um, dance classes and things that-

Jeff Cavaliere 27:49 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 27:49 ... um, or kickboxing-

Jeff Cavaliere 27:51 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 27:51 ... these kinds of things, which... so it makes sense that if you can hook somebody on the conditioning aspect or the skill aspect and kind of trick them into doing more cardio-

Jeff Cavaliere 27:58 Right.

Andrew Huberman 27:58 ... uh, so to speak, that, that's terrific. Also, the neuroscientist in me just has to say, forgive me, um, that anytime you're engaging the, you know, the two sets of motor neurons, the ones in your brain, the upper motor neurons and the ones in your spinal cord, anytime you're engaging those upper motor neurons, which are for deliberate, uh, well-controlled action, you're doing a great thing for your brain in terms of brain longevity. So, um, I'm... now I need to incorporate some actual skills into my training (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 28:24 . Um, going back to weight training a bit, one of the most important things I learned from you, so over the years, was that when training to increase muscle size, to really think not so much about moving weights, but more about challenging muscles.

Jeff Cavaliere 28:41 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 28:42 I also heard this from my friend Ben Pakulski who's a very well accomplished... he was a bodybuilder, now he's into other aspects of fitness, teaches fitness, but don't move weights, challenge muscles, unless you're trying to power lift or something of that sort, which I'm not. Immensely helpful. But the other thing that I learned from you that, uh, combined with that was this idea that certain muscles will grow better and get stronger much more easily, maybe even will recover better because of our ability to contract them really hard. And this, uh, what I call the cavalier test, which is, um, at least if I could paraphrase the abil... so for instance, if I can... um, f- f- ... it's always the bicep, isn't it? Let's use the-

Jeff Cavaliere 29:23 It's easy.

Andrew Huberman 29:23 ... let's use the calf or the bicep. If you can, if you can flex your bicep to the point where it hurts a little bit, like it almost feels like a cramp or a cramp, or you can flex your calf to the point where it really cramps up a little bit, almost feels like it's knotting up, that's a pretty good indication that you're going to be able to stimulate that muscle well under load if you're doing the movement properly.

Jeff Cavaliere 29:43 Right.

Andrew Huberman 29:43 And that's the feeling to actually aim for each repetition, maybe even throughout the repetition. For me, this completely transformed my results.

Jeff Cavaliere 29:52 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 29:52 And this was, I think, maybe five, six years ago that I first heard this from you, body parts that, for me, lagged behind that I thought maybe genetically weren't going to work for me, immediately just started growing.

Jeff Cavaliere 30:03 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 30:03 Right? And I was getting stronger and stronger and I thought, "This is really something." So much so that I've dedicated a portion of my research along with... in collaboration with another group to try and understand...... what's happening in these upper motor neurons in the brain that can engage the muscles even more. And that it's not just about progressive overload or putting a pump into the muscle. Um, that it's really this mind-muscle connection is a real thing when it comes to predicting results, and that you can get better at it. So, uh, forgive me for paraphrasing, uh, your incredible content around this. It made a tremendous difference for me and a number of other people that I've passed that along to. But, uh, what can you... First of all, how did you arrive at that? Um, because we hear about the mind-muscle connection, but I really heard it first from you. How did you arrive at this kind of cramp test, the Cavalier test, as I'll call it?

Jeff Cavaliere 30:52 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 30:52 Um, it's always weird when people name things after themselves-

Jeff Cavaliere 30:54 (laughs) All right, right.

Andrew Huberman 30:54 ... in science, but other scientists can name things-

Jeff Cavaliere 30:56 I'll take it.

Andrew Huberman 30:56 So there is now officially, the Cavalier test is whether or not you can cramp the muscle in the absence of load-

Jeff Cavaliere 31:02 Right, right.

Andrew Huberman 31:02 ... just flexing it to the point where it hurts a little bit. That would be an in- a good indication that you could grow that muscle well. So how did you come up with this?

Jeff Cavaliere 31:11 I mean, it just, uh, honestly, it's something that, that made sense to me because during my, eh, workouts, even as a, as a young kid just starting out, like, I always wanted to know what is it working, you know? A lot of people ask that question more so than you think. Like, what is this supposed to work? And a lot... And, and I don't know if you've ever noticed, but, like, when people ask that question if they're, if they're being trained by a trainer, and the trainer's saying, "Well, just do this. Do this exercise," and they'll show you how to do it. But then they'll say, "But what is it supposed to wa- Where am I supposed to feel this?" Right? People, th- they just inherently ask that question. A lot of people will. I was one of those that did that, and I asked that question, not because I knew what I was doing but just because I don't know. I wanted to know what was supposed to be doing the work. Once you do that, and you start to seek that out and say, "Okay, well, if the bicep is what's supposed to be doing the work, then I wanna make sure the biceps doing the work," right? So then I would just sort of really, like, tweak the movement to make it do more work or feel more uncomfortable or get a stronger contraction, knowing if that's supposed to do the job. It wasn't until PT school that I'm, you know, learning, oh, well, you know, flexion of the elbow is the brachialis and the bis, and the bis that's responsible for supination. Like, you start to l- I learned other components of it, but all I wanted to know was to bring my arm up in a curl, what is supposed to do the job. So I would seek out ways to make that happen better, and when I was able to do that, I could feel the stronger contraction, and I just, I don't know what it w- I just, I was no visionary. I just felt like I c- I knew that that was going to be better for me if the muscle I was trying to grow was being stressed more effectively. So when I was, um, attempting to do this across different exercises, I would notice that what I could do potentially on a curl when my arm is up, you know, where you asked me to flex my bicep, that position, I couldn't do if I was, you know, doing a concentration curl, or I couldn't carry over to a cable curl. And that shouldn't really change, right? 'Cause the function is still largely the same. There's still elbow flexion. There's still supination. Like, why am I not able to do it there? And that's when it sort of clued into me that, like, y- your mind-muscle connection on not just w- your mind with one muscle but on every exercise matters, and it varies from exercise to exercise. And even if you don't gain muscle size from doing that, although I think it's very hard not to, especially if you're not used to doing that, there, there's a term I like to call muscularity, you know, which is a difference, right? It's the level of sort of resting tone in the muscle. That improves dramatically. You know, if you can learn how to just start to e- engage that muscle better, the muscularity, the, the resting tone of that muscle is harder, it's more, it's more, uh, at attention. It's just more, it, it's, it's more alive, you know? And that's all driven from being able to connect better neurologically with the muscle that you, that you're trying to train. I've talked about a lot, inefficiency is really what you're trying to seek in movements when you're trying to create hypertrophy. When goal, when strength is your goal, efficiency of the movement is what you're looking for. You're looking to have muscles tie together and work well efficiently, the chest, the shoulders, the triceps, to get a bar off of your chest during a bench press. You're not looking to make it a very inefficient, you know, leverages for your chest to try to grow your chest in a bench press. You're trying to let the whole package come together for greater output. But when you're trying to go and create muscle hypertrophy, or even this muscularity that I talk about, you need to seek ways to make it feel more uncomfortable, right? If you don't feel the discomfort, then you're doing something wrong, and, uh, I struggle to this day on certain muscle groups to still do that even knowing what I'm trying to work and knowing what the goal of, uh, everything I'm preaching here. It's very difficult for some muscles and for c- certain people to do this on certain muscles. But, as you mentioned, practice does help, and the more you become, you know, consistent and deliberate with what you're trying to do, the more of an, of a result you actually

Jeff Cavaliere 35:05 get.

Andrew Huberman 35:06 It's, um, c- couple of really important points I'd like to, to, um, delve into further. Um, first of all, eh, my hunch was always that the muscle groups that grew easy- most easily and that I could contract hardest without any, um... The, the first time I did the Cavalier test, got 10 outta 10-

Jeff Cavaliere 35:23 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 35:23 ... if we give it a 10 outta 10 scale.

Jeff Cavaliere 35:25 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 35:25 You know, it could just, uh, like, cinch, isolate those muscles, cinch them, grow them easily. I mean, there's certain body parts, I don't want to say which ones 'cause it doesn't really matter-

Jeff Cavaliere 35:31 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 35:32 ... um, that I always felt like if I just did push-ups, they would grow, and these muscles are far away from any of the muscles (laughs) that are supposed-

Jeff Cavaliere 35:37 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 35:37 ... to be involved in push-ups, even though I like to think I'm doing push-ups correctly.

Jeff Cavaliere 35:40 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 35:40 Um, you'll tell me if I'm, if I'm not. Um, but some of that, I think, is genetic, and some of that has to do with the sports that I played when I was younger. So I swam, I played soccer, I skateboard.

Jeff Cavaliere 35:51 Yep.

Andrew Huberman 35:52 And then later, I boxed. And so, um, the muscles involved in those sports were always very easy to engage later when I went into the gym.

Jeff Cavaliere 35:59 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 36:00 Uh, so I guess a, perhaps, a call to parents, you know, having kids do a lot of dynamic activity, um, seems like it might be a good idea. The other thing is this issue of mu- of muscularity. I am so glad you brought that up. There are, and I have to imagine, a large number of listeners who don't want to get bigger. They don't want to take up a larger clothing size.

Jeff Cavaliere 36:20 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 36:20 Um, they don't want to take up more space. In fact, some of them would like to take up less space, but they w- they want that quality.... that you're describing, which is the, you know, oftentimes you hear it more in the, um, here I'm stereotyping a bit but, with, uh, kindness, you know, you hear, uh, from women who haven't weight trained they say, "I don't want to get big," often. Sometimes they do-

Jeff Cavaliere 36:39 Right.

Andrew Huberman 36:39 ... but most, most women that I've helped weight train, or talked to about weight training say-

Jeff Cavaliere 36:42 Tone.

Andrew Huberman 36:42 ... "I don't want to get big, I want to get tone."

Jeff Cavaliere 36:44 Right.

Andrew Huberman 36:44 And I think what they're referring to is this quality that, of muscularity.

Jeff Cavaliere 36:48 100%.

Andrew Huberman 36:48 This idea that at, at resting, or at close to rest, or any time someone reaches out and grabs a glass, that, that the muscles almost look like they're kind of twitching underneath the skin.

Jeff Cavaliere 36:57 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 36:57 And yet it's not Saran wrap skin anatomy chart type skin.

Jeff Cavaliere 37:00 Right.

Andrew Huberman 37:01 Um, so this thing of muscularity, or, or resting tone, you know, has a physiological basis.

Jeff Cavaliere 37:07 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 37:07 I think it's how readily the nerves, like, are communicating with the muscles. And you're saying that by learning to engage the muscles more actively, the resting tone or muscularity can improve. Have you seen that both in men and women? Um-

Jeff Cavaliere 37:20 Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 37:21 ... and, and do you think this is something that takes, um, upkeep? Uh, maintenance? Or that you, you know, once you develop that inner muscle you can just kind of let it coast?

Jeff Cavaliere 37:29 So, I think like everything it k- it requires upkeep. You know, use it or lose it, I do believe, uh, firmly, but like I think that it's the, the development of the connection's gonna be harder than the maintenance of the connection. Uh, as I said, I still struggle to this day for myself with, uh, you know, unnamed muscle groups, you know, also, you know? But like, you know, there's just, there's, there's just certain, um, areas that are harder for your brain for whatever reason to just develop that, that connection at that type of level to create, create that extra strong contraction. But I think that it, with proper dedication and focus, and I'll go right out and say, you know, calves is one of the areas that I don't, I don't necessarily have a great connection with. And I also obviously must not care so much 'cause I don't put in the time and effort to cre- create that connection as I could. Um, so I think what might happen is, you know, yeah there could be a struggle there but then with, with struggle comes disinterest 'cause you're like, "Well screw it, I'm, I'm a, I'm a calf knot and I'm not gonna do anything about it." You know? So I think if you put the, the required effort in, and the time and repetitions that you will develop that, and once you do develop it, it's gonna stick around a, a lot longer than it would had you not invested any time into it at all. Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 38:40 Um, you know, not requiring as much of that but I mean, I, I don't know like y- you know, you mentioned now when you train it's like you're, you're just, this is just part of how you train now. Like you're going hard, you're trying to, you know, really forcefully contract. You're not just moving the weight, I say, from point A to point B, but you're like trying to contract the way through that range. Um, that is a mindset that I try to put into what- everything I'm doing unless of course I'm focused on a strength exercise where I'm just trying to lift a greater amount and use all the muscles together. But when the goal is in efficiency for hypertrophy, I am really trying to create that contraction and it's just part of my training. So, I guess that, you know, that for consistency's sake as long as I'm training it's happening.

Jeff Cavaliere 39:26 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 39:26 You know? Is, if I, if I get away from training then it's not happening at all. But, you know, even there I probably, uh, another embarrassing admission, probably w- you know, will mindfully do it throughout the day even with no weight in my hand.

Jeff Cavaliere 39:36 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 39:36 You know? And c- muscle groups, whether it be my abs or my arm or my shoulders or something, I'm doing something just to sort of engage the muscles, and I do think that some of that sort of, uh, uh, inane practice actually helps by the time you go back into the gym. You just kind of keep that, you keep that, that, that connection going. Well it certainly obeys all the rules of neuroplasticity. You know the fire together, wire together mantra which is the words of my colleague Carla Shatz, um, hold true for all aspects of neural function including nerve to muscle so these flexing throughout the day or the deliberate isolation of, of contracting a muscle throughout the day is without question engaging neuroplasticity and if you were to do fewer of those repetitions, you're gonna get less engagement of the nerve to muscle connection. I can say this with, with, uh, with a smile and with confidence because one of the first things all neuroscience students learn is about the neuromuscular junction 'cause it's, it's a really simple example of where the more times the nerve fires and gets the muscle to contract, the stronger that connection gets. Receptors are brought there-

Jeff Cavaliere 40:34 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 40:34 ... etc, etc. There's a whole bunch of mechanisms for the topic of another, uh, podcast but, um, basically that practice throughout the day is, um, makes total sense and works. Um.

Jeff Cavaliere 40:45 Yeah there, and there's no, there, believe me there's no science behind that in terms of, you know, the application of it. You do it when you catch yourself doing it, you know, from time-

Andrew Huberman 40:54 Right.

Jeff Cavaliere 40:54 ... to time, you know? But-

Andrew Huberman 40:54 Right.

Jeff Cavaliere 40:54 ... it is definitely something that's easily done discretely and, you know, you wind up doing it. I actually, I think in a, in a recent video when I, I did talk about, um, growing your arms by just impro- you know, improving the connection. Not that that connection itself is applying any load or, or, you know, resistance that's significant to create overload for growth, but it's the development of that connection that I then take back with me into the gym at a more effective level-

Andrew Huberman 41:19 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Cavaliere 41:19 ... that takes every exercise I do there and makes it more effective.

Andrew Huberman 41:22 That's like sharpening the blade-

Jeff Cavaliere 41:23 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 41:24 ... so to speak. Um, yeah, certainly obeys the laws of, of, of nerve to muscle physiology. Um, want

Andrew Huberman 41:31 to just touch on, uh, a couple of things. Uh, if the goal is to challenge muscles and one is dividing their body into let's say, you know, a three or four day a week split or so or maybe up to six, um, how do you know when a muscle is rel- ready to be challenged again? I've heard okay every 48 hours is, you know, protein synthesis-

Jeff Cavaliere 41:51 Right.

Andrew Huberman 41:51 ... increases and then we'll get into this and then it drops off, but frankly if I train my legs hard I can get stronger from workout to workout or at least better in some way workout to workout, uh, leg workout to leg workout, training them once every five to eight days.

Jeff Cavaliere 42:08 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 42:09 If I train them more often I get worse so the, whatever that 48 hour to 72 hour thing is somehow my legs don't obey that but (laughs) , you know, or maybe something else is wrong with me but I'm sure there are many things else wrong with me but, um, how do you assess recovery at the local level, meaning at the level of the muscle-

Jeff Cavaliere 42:29 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 42:29 ... so we'll talk about soreness and getting better, stronger, more repetitions etc, and then the systemic level, the level of the nervous system? And I'd love for you to tell us about the-... uh, the tool that, again, I learned from you, which is actually using a physical scale.

Jeff Cavaliere 42:43 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 42:43 Because it turns out this is ... That we'll let you tell what the tool is, but that tool is also actively being used for assessing cognitive decline and cognitive maintenance and cognitive function in people with Alzheimer's and dementia.

Jeff Cavaliere 42:57 Interesting. That makes total sense. Makes total sense. I, I, I ... All right. (clears throat) So (clears throat) regarding the, the, um, the first part of the question, like, you know, how do you, how would you kind of dictate when a muscle's recovered? So I do think that what you're experiencing is totally real, uh, that different muscles recover at different rates. And I've always been so fascinated by this concept, um, I talked about it internally with my, with my team, but, like, I feel like what we really need, the holy grail to, to training is going to be when we're able to crack the code on an individual basis when a muscle is recovered, and that is going to dictate its training schedule. And the fact that you might have a bicep that could be trained, you know, via, via a pulling workout, a regular bicep dedicated workout, forget the split at the moment. You might have a bicep that's been able to be trained that can be trained again the next day, you know, and then the next day, and then maybe you need a day off after that. But like, you know, and that, that can vary from person to person, for sure, and it can vary from muscle to muscle in that person over the course of time, a- as you mentioned, 'cause the systemic recovery's gonna impact all those muscles anyway. Mm-hmm. But let's say you're systemically recovering. Every muscle itself is going to have a, a, a, you know, a recovery rate. And I think what's fascinating is that when you talked about before, we like to train this week, or we have a, like, the way our mind looks at training, well, if that was the case with the biceps, that bicep is a slave to the rest of your training split. You know? Where it's like, well, why does it have to be also at the end of every s- eighth day or, you know, or whatever, when it might respond better to something much more frequently? And your legs are also being thrown into that mix. There's a Mike Mentzer concept where he's like, you know, train it, you know, one set and be done for 14 days. I mean, you know, it ... there's, there's, there's such variability between muscle groups, and you're, you're linking them all together. Um, I, I think that coming back and using muscle soreness as a guideline for that is, is one of the only tools we have in terms of the local level. You know? We don't really have, you know, being able to measure, let's say, uh, CPK levels inside of a muscle would be amazing, you know, at, at a local level to see how, how recovered that muscle is. But that becomes fairly invasive, at least to my knowledge. It becomes fairly invasive. Mm-hmm. So what are our tools? I mean, I, I think that at the basic level, that's the one that most people can relate to and easily identify and then use that as a guideline. And if you're training when you're really sore, um, it's probably not a great idea. And that, and it's probably a good indication that that muscle's not recovered. But at least hearing what you and I are saying here might be a comfort to the person to say, "Yeah, it is possible that it's not recovered." Just because 48 hours is the recommendation and just because research points to muscle protein synthesis needing a re-stimulation, well, maybe not. Maybe you're not necessarily there yet. You're in that ... For that muscle, you're not there yet. Um, so it's all really interesting stuff, but as far as the, the, uh, the systemic, you know, recovery, I think there's a lot of ways, you know, people talk about resting heart rate measured in the morning, um, (clears throat) all different kinds of, of, um, you know, core temperature and things like that, that might become altered in a state of, uh, non-recovery. But grip strength is very, very much tied to performance and recovery. And when I was at the Mets, we used to actually take grip strength measurements as a baseline in spring training all the time. Now obviously, as a baseball player, you're gripping a bat, you're a pitcher, you're gripping a ball. Like, you know, grip ... Having good grip strength is important, so if we noticed somebody had a very weak grip, it's just a good focal point of a specialized training component for the program.

Andrew Huberman 46:35 Would you do this every day with those guys?

Jeff Cavaliere 46:37 No. We would do ... I- in spring training, we'd do sort of a baseline entry level measurement, and then we would, we would measure it throughout the season, maybe once every two weeks or three weeks, and, and, and, you know, the, the idea there was to, to manage, to, you know, manage the recover, measure the recovery. Um, but I just gave it away. You know, there, to, to, to do the, you know, to determine overall recovery, your grip strength is pretty highly correlated. So we have found that wh- with one of those scales, those old-fashioned bathroom scales at like, uh, Bed, Bath & Beyond or wherever you can get, which by the way, almost impossible. I believe Jesse and I were searching for the last scale to put in that video, and we almost couldn't find one, 'cause everything is like digital and every-

Andrew Huberman 47:14 Mm-hmm, yeah.

Jeff Cavaliere 47:14 You know, it's like ... This ... I'm looking at the old-fashioned dial controls, and-

Andrew Huberman 47:17 It's like old Macintosh computers.

Jeff Cavaliere 47:19 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 47:19 There's a, there's a huge market for them, and old phones.

Jeff Cavaliere 47:21 Right, right. I had one. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 47:22 Kids, keep your phones now. In 30 years, the, the lame phone now-

Jeff Cavaliere 47:26 Right.

Andrew Huberman 47:26 ... will be worth a lot of money.

Jeff Cavaliere 47:27 Will be worth a lot.

Andrew Huberman 47:28 Yeah.

Jeff Cavaliere 47:28 So, you know, I wound up, um, uh, you know, finding one, and it's a great tool for just squeezing the, the, the, uh, the scale with your hands and seeing what type of output you can get. Um, and I think we, we all can relate to this when you just visualize. Imagine the last time you were sick or that when you ... Or just try this, you know, the next time you wake up in the morning. When you first wake up in the morning, you're still groggy. Try to squeeze your hand. Try to make a fist as hard as you can.

Andrew Huberman 47:54 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Cavaliere 47:54 You're gonna sit there angry at your fist because it won't contract as hard as you know it can.

Andrew Huberman 47:59 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Cavaliere 47:59 You don't have the ability to just create the output, and that is because in that state, you're still sleepy. You're still fatigued. You know, you're, you're not even awake, uh, uh, uh, at the, you know, the whole level at this point. Well, that is the, that is still, uh, uh, uh, an actual phenomena that happens that, you know, a, a lack of recovery or a lack of wakefulness or whatever you want to say is, is gonna lead to a decreased output there. So when you start to measure that on a daily basis, you can get a pretty good sense of where you're at, and I think when people start to see a drop-off of 10% or so or, or even greater of, of their, uh, grip output, um, you really should skip the gym that day, because I don't think there's much you're gonna do there that's going to be that, that beneficial, even if it is the day to train legs or whatever day it is.

Andrew Huberman 48:46 Mm-hmm-I, I love this tool. It's simple, it's low-cost, if you can find such a scale.

Jeff Cavaliere 48:51 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 48:51 I guess you could also find one of those grippers that, um, and you could do this in a very non-quantitative way.

Jeff Cavaliere 48:55 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 48:56 Um, but better would be a scale where you could actually measure-

Jeff Cavaliere 48:58 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 48:59 ... how hard you can squeeze this thing at a given time of day. Uh, it draws to mind just a little f- uh, neuroscience factoid. In the world of circadian neurobiology, one of the consistent findings is that in the middle of your nighttime, you know, they'll wake people up and they'll say, "Do this test."

Jeff Cavaliere 49:14 Right.

Andrew Huberman 49:14 In the laboratory, they use a different, uh, apparatus, but it's essentially the same thing, and in the middle of the night, grip strength is very, very low.

Jeff Cavaliere 49:20 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 49:21 And, you know, mid-morning grip strength is high, and as the body temperature goes up into the afternoon, grip strength goes higher and higher and higher and then it drops off.

Jeff Cavaliere 49:27 Right.

Andrew Huberman 49:27 There's a circadian rhythm in grip temperature.

Jeff Cavaliere 49:29 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 49:29 So you probably want to do this at more or less the same time each day if you're gonna use it, but it- I think it's brilliant and, um, in its simplicity and its directness to these upper motor neurons, 'cause that's really what it's, uh, assessing. Your ability, again, it's about the ability to contract the muscles hard. If you can't do that, you're not going to get an effective workout.

Jeff Cavaliere 49:45 Yeah, they, they also, I mean, there certainly are more sophisticated tools, too. As a, as a, a PT, you know, we have, uh, uh, hand grip dynamometers and we can, we can measure one side at a time too. You know, I'm not really... I'm, I'm getting a little bit blinded by the fact that both hands are squeezing into that scale-

Andrew Huberman 50:00 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Cavaliere 50:00 ... and I don't get really a left-right comparison. But even at that level, that could give you a little bit more detail, but that comes at a cost. Those are pretty expensive devices. But if it's... Listen, if you're an athlete, you know, the, the 200, 300 bucks it costs to have one of those would be well worth, you know, the added investment, you know?

Andrew Huberman 50:15 Well, and I'm sure some of our listeners will want one too, 'cause there are a lot of, uh, tech geeks out there.

Jeff Cavaliere 50:20 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 50:20 Um, not tech industry geeks, but people who like-

Jeff Cavaliere 50:23 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 50:23 ... like tech gear. Uh, what's it called again?

Jeff Cavaliere 50:25 It's a hand grip dynamometer.

Andrew Huberman 50:26 Hand grip dynono-

Jeff Cavaliere 50:27 Dynamometer is a tough one. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 50:28 Dynomometer. Said a- said by Jeff with a, with a great East Coast accent, and by me in a terrible, uh, botched, uh, West Coast version. Um, thank you. We'll, we'll, uh, put that in the show notes

Andrew Huberman 50:39 also. Um, no, I think recovery is key. We always hear about sleep. You grow when you sleep and incidentally, your brain, you stimulate learning when you're awake obviously, but the reordering of neural connections happens in sleep. This is why sleep is the way to get smarter, provided you're also doing the learning part.

Jeff Cavaliere 50:55 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 50:55 Sleep's the way to get stronger, provided you're also doing the training part. You've had some really inter- you've put out interesting content over the years, in terms of, um, even sleep position. Uh, one of the major changes that I made to my sleep behavior is to not have the sheets tucked in at the end of the bed.

Jeff Cavaliere 51:11 Yeah, right, right.

Andrew Huberman 51:11 And I'll tell you, this had a profound impact on several things. First of all, my feet have always been the bane of my existence. Broke them a bunch skateboarding. They, I, and I noticed when I'd run, I'd get shin splints and, and then I started to notice that my feet sort of, um, uh, you're the PT, they were kind of floppy and-

Jeff Cavaliere 51:26 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 51:26 ... them, you know, it's as if I was pointing my toes slightly all the time at rest if I was. Um, and I realized that based on listening to you previously, that my sheets were wrapped tight. Not hotel tight.

Jeff Cavaliere 51:37 Right, right.

Andrew Huberman 51:37 Right?

Narrator 51:37 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 51:38 I don't want their thing in the hotels.

Jeff Cavaliere 51:38 Can't get your feet in.

Andrew Huberman 51:39 And I started, um, releasing the, the sheets at the end of the bed.

Jeff Cavaliere 51:43 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 51:43 And I also started doing some tibialis work.

Jeff Cavaliere 51:45 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 51:46 Um, front of shins work essentially. Changed everything. My back pain from running, my shin splints disappeared, my posture improved, although I, my audience will tell me that it still needs improvement. There are always five or 10 people that want-

Jeff Cavaliere 51:57 Just maybe sit up straight.

Andrew Huberman 51:58 I've actually had chairs sent to our mailing address.

Jeff Cavaliere 52:01 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 52:01 (laughs) Very nice chairs, right? So I'm trying my, I'm trying there. Um, but this is fascinating, right? Um, how, the position that one sleeps in. Um, I fortunately have never had any shoulder issues, knock on wood, but maybe you could just talk, talk to us a little bit about sleep and sleep position for sake of waking position and movement. 'Cause this, I think, is a very unique and very powerful way to think about sleep. This podcast has done a lot of episodes about keeping the room cool, getting sunlight in your eyes, et cetera, how to get into sleep.

Jeff Cavaliere 52:31 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 52:31 But you've talked about physically what positions might be better to sleep in, so, uh, please, please, uh, enrich us.

Jeff Cavaliere 52:39 Yeah, I mean, well, first of all, there, You know, some people's opinions of, of that type of content is that you, you know, you sleep in the p- the position that's most comfortable so you ensure that you're sleeping. Oh, great. I, I understand that. We all want to sleep. That's the goal when we put our head on the pillow is to actually fall asleep and wake up in the morning and not know what the hell happened unless you had a dream, but, you know, beyond that, there are certainly physical components to sleep that that is why a lot of times people wake up and say like, that, that you can incur pretty serious injuries in sleep. People will wake up and have like a shoulder that did not bother them at all be humming the next day or even for weeks after because of the one sleep position they put themselves in in a prolonged way and they happen to have a deep sleep even through the discomfort. Um, that can do actually some, some, some damage. So it's understandable that the body can incur some strain and stress if you're sleeping in the wrong way. One of the things I say right off the, the bat is, sleeping on your stomach just doesn't really have many benefits, you know? You're, you're putting yourself into a position that is depending upon the, the, the orientation of your, your mattress or how many pillows you're using, but you're basically putting yourselves into a excessive extension of the lumbar spine, which for most people isn't very good. If you're, if you're a disc patient, um, I guess that might be helpful, you know, for, for relocating the disc. But I mean, for the most part, um, your hands are then usually not at your sides, but they're up under your arms so you've got them into sort of internal rotation up over elevation in your head. It's just not a great position. You also have to crank your neck from one side or the other in order to breathe or you're going to be putting your face down straight into the pillow. So I would skip that one, and there's some people that are total belly sleepers and I, and I would just say, listen, I don't think that is the, the most healthful long-term way for you to sleep. Try to adopt a different position. Um, sleeping on your side oftentimes is, is also brought along with that, the legs and knees coming up towards the chest.... prolonged hip flexion. Listen, we're doing enough of that during the day. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 54:40 Mm-hmm, yes, what we're doing right now.

Jeff Cavaliere 54:41 Right, right.

Andrew Huberman 54:41 Yeah.

Jeff Cavaliere 54:41 We really didn't do like 10 hours-

Andrew Huberman 54:43 Right.

Jeff Cavaliere 54:43 ... or eight hours or something-

Andrew Huberman 54:44 Right.

Jeff Cavaliere 54:44 ... at night like that, you know, and it just is reinforcing... You know, and as we've said too, you know, let's say you trained that day, you're just reinforcing muscle shortening overnight, you know, where, where the body is healing and trying to create some, you know, changes in your body. Um, (clears throat) one of the reasons why I recommend stretching or static stretching prior to going to bed, a lot of people don't really want to do it at that point 'cause it could take 10 minutes, five, 10 minutes depending upon how many muscles you have to stretch, but, you know, it's good to sort of try to establish this longer length temporarily prior to going into a state where you're going to be not moving and recovering an- and creating new, uh, changes in the muscle. So, um, you know, that kind of... I don't say it doesn't rule out the- the side sleeper. The side sleeper could be very, very helpful for somebody that has apnea or, you know, uh, other, other conditions. So again, it's not a- uh, an all or nothing approach, but it just... It's something that you need to pay attention to. Um, when you are on your back, like you were talking about, and your feet are wedged underneath a tight sheets at the end of the bed, and most of us, unless we consciously are pulling them up, don't prefer our beds to have really loose sheets at the end of the bed-

Andrew Huberman 55:54 It's hard to make the bed in the morning.

Jeff Cavaliere 55:55 Right. So it's like yo- you, you're gonna wanna have, you know, them tight. Well, I'm, I'm, I'm saying as you experienced, you know, you're gonna have (clears throat) these, this, uh, you know, pr- prolonged plantar flexion that's going to likely lead to shorter, you know, calves over time, um, because you're lacking all that length for that long period of time that you could have if you just loosened up the sheets and allowed your feet to just, you know, hang out where they are. Now, the resting position of the ankle (clears throat) is not in dorsiflexion. It's gonna be still in some plantar flexion but not being driven down and pulled down into that position. Um, and I think what happens actually is people who get uncomfortable that way, even in their sleep, will shift away from that by turning either onto their side or their stomach. So there's definitely an impact of the body position in sleep and figuring out the best way that you can still sleep, of course, and get your rest but have a mindful eye towards what it's doing to your body and choose the one that's least, uh, you know, abrasive to your body is the way you should go.

Andrew Huberman 56:54 That's terrific, and again, it's really helped me, and, um, uh, I am a big believer based on good science out of Stanford and elsewhere, um, that, you know, as much as we can be nasal breathers in sleep, we probably should be. I don't know if you've done any content, uh, yet about-

Jeff Cavaliere 57:10 I have.

Andrew Huberman 57:10 ... taping the mouth shut with some medical tape.

Jeff Cavaliere 57:12 I have.

Andrew Huberman 57:12 But, you know, the, the, the benefits of nasal breathing in sleep are pretty tremendous, but it takes a little bit of training-

Jeff Cavaliere 57:17 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 57:17 ... for people to do, and the training is very simple. It's a little, little piece of medical tape, so, um, again, a topic for another time.

Andrew Huberman 57:24 I'm glad you mentioned stretching. I was gonna ask about stretching a little bit later, but let's talk about stretching. Um, when's the best time to stretch for particular types of results? And maybe you could define some of the different types of stretching. Um, so you just mentioned a l- a, a little bit of, um... Would you call it light stretching or...? Uh, okay, I'm completely naïve here on stretching, so let me just say I can think of stretching where I hold the stretch and really try and ex- um, "lengthen." I don't want the PTs jumping all over. I don't know what it is, but nutrition and the PTs online are really... They've got pitchforks in both hands. Academics- (laughs)

Jeff Cavaliere 57:58 That's a, that's a recent-

Andrew Huberman 57:59 Yeah.

Jeff Cavaliere 57:59 That is a recent evolution, I think, for sure. I see. Uh, not the nutrition as much, but the PTs have become a little bit angry these days.

Andrew Huberman 58:04 I see. Well, I always say with feelings-

Jeff Cavaliere 58:05 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 58:05 ... of powerlessness comes aggression.

Jeff Cavaliere 58:07 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 58:08 Remember that, folks.

Jeff Cavaliere 58:09 There you go.

Andrew Huberman 58:09 So, um, in any, in any case, um, there's stretching where I'm, I'm, you know, trying to consciously, um, "lengthen," again in air quotes, the muscle. I'm not, um, yanking on the limb or-

Jeff Cavaliere 58:22 Right.

Andrew Huberman 58:22 ... bobbing up and down. Maybe you could define the different types of stretching for people, maybe give us some rough guidelines about whether or not to do it cold or warm, before training, after training, et cetera.

Jeff Cavaliere 58:31 So yeah, there, there's obviously... There's a lot of different types of stretching. It can get into, you know, PNF stretching and things that are a little bit more, um, you know, niche, but like i- in general the two basic forms of stretching are active stretching and passive stretching, and your... Or, you know, your dynamic work. And, and your passive stretching is done with the goal of trying to create an increase, uh, in, uh, the flexibility of the muscle. So whether you're actually increasing the length of that muscle, you know, more so what you're doing is increasing the resis- or decreasing the resistance of that muscle to want to stay at a certain level of flexibility. So when we can sort of take the brakes off and allow that muscle to, to allow us more range of motion, we're inherently in- increasing flexibility without necessarily having to increase the length of that muscle. Um, that is usually done at a time far away from your workout because they have shown where this type of stretching done prior to an activity, and it could be, uh, like a structured activity like l- like lifting or it could be a little bit less structured like competing in a sport in a, in a spontaneous type way, that there is a period of recalibration that is needed after doing this because you're disrupting the length tension relationship of the muscle that causes you to not necessarily be able to rely on these, I've talked about before, stored motor engrams in your mind in terms of this is the pattern for how I swing a golf club, say, you know, and now introducing a little bit of flexibility or added flexibility or range because of the stretching I did before. It takes maybe a hole or two or three to match up again, "Oh, this is the... This is what he's trying to do, that golf swing thing I, that I remembered again." Like, it's not remembering the every component like, "I have to bend my right wrist back 10 degrees and I have to bend my elbow and I have to b-" Like your body stores these patterns for motor efficiency, so... And when I have to start matching up that stored pattern with what's feeling new because of the increased range, I can impair performance. And again, it could happen even in a, a gym workout where you're talking about your first, second set, third set, um, where maybe the repercussions aren't as big 'cause I'll just do a few extra sets, but in performance if you screw up your first three rounds, you're playing on a PGA Tour and you shoot... You know, y- you're six over after three, you're, you're, you're done, you know? (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 1:00:49 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Cavaliere 1:00:49 So I think it matters there. Um-... as far as the dynamic, you know, so we, so we relegate that, as I mentioned, sort of towards the end of the day, when it's not going to impact performance but even maybe have the additional benefit of creating the, the feeling of length or the increase or decrease in resistance to this length, um, at a time when I know my body is going to try to tend to heal, and heal shorter. Never longer, but heal shorter. So if I can introduce a little bit of that extra, uh, length or, or decreased resistance to, to that length, it's a better time to do it. So we'll... I think it promotes a, a better recovery. Um, if I wanted to do-

Andrew Huberman 1:01:26 So st- sorry to interrupt.

Jeff Cavaliere 1:01:27 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:01:27 But so stretching later in the day, um, because I, I'm, I'm intrigued by this concept of heal shorter.

Jeff Cavaliere 1:01:32 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:01:33 So part of the healing and recovery process means a shortening of the muscles. This is the tensing up in sleep.

Jeff Cavaliere 1:01:37 Yes, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:01:37 Uh, could you elaborate just a bit on that? And then, sorry to break your flow, but then to continue.

Jeff Cavaliere 1:01:41 No, that's okay. Yeah, no, just basically, you know, what, what's been shown is that when I'm, when the, the repair process, muscular repair from, let's say, strength training during the day, the repair process usually results in a muscle that is slightly shorter rather than increased in length. You know, i- it's just a, it's, you know, muscles prefer to sort of, you know, ratchet their way down into that, th- that, uh, contraction and then, you know, maintain that, that, that more comfortable length-tension relationship. So when you're sleeping, it, it tends to, you know, err on the side of shorter rather than longer, when ideally, we don't really want that. We want to maintain as much of that length, because with more length, we actually have more leverage, right? That muscle has more leverage to contract. If it was all the way contracted, you know, you really can't, obviously we know, generate much force in a muscle that's already maximally contracted. So I think we, we want to do something that we, whatever we can, whatever little weapons we have in our arsenal that could allow us to do this prior to sleep. And again, it's just making it a, a conscious choice to do it at a time of the day that makes a little bit more sense. Um, dynamic stretching is really not done for that purpose of trying to create any type of, of feeling of, uh, act... Or, or increasing the, the potential length, as you said, of the muscle, but more so the readiness of the muscle to perform. And increasing, you know, exploring the ends of that range of motion in a more dynamic way so you're not hanging out there and disrupting that length-tension relationship, but just sort of touching the ends of those barriers so that when you feel movement again, it feels looser, it feels more ready. And, uh, and obviously at the same time, warming up, blood flow, all the benefits we get from just warming up in general. So like, you know, that's, that's a series you've probably seen a bunch of times, but like, you know, leg swings and, and, you know, butt kicks and, you know, lunge, walking lunges, and all types of dr-

Andrew Huberman 1:03:34 Toe touches.

Jeff Cavaliere 1:03:34 Toe touches.

Andrew Huberman 1:03:35 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Cavaliere 1:03:35 All those kind of drills, those active stretching drills. Or, you know, lunging with rotations of the upper body to try to get some of the thoracic spine involved too. Those are the drills that people will do prior to training that are both excitatory in terms of just the nervous system, but also helpful for just the general warm up the body 'cause of the blood flow, but from a muscle readiness standpoint, not impairing the performance while at the same time exploring the increased ranges. 'Cause as you know, the first toe touch you do is not as high as the last toe touch you do (laughs) .

Andrew Huberman 1:04:05 For me, it doesn't even include the toe. (laughs)

Jeff Cavaliere 1:04:08 (laughs) Right, right, the shin touch, the knee touch.

Andrew Huberman 1:04:09 Toe touch attempt. Right, yeah.

Jeff Cavaliere 1:04:10 Right, right. So like, you know, those, those are going to improve with each subsequent rep, and I think that's what people actually ... Like, y- y- when you can see those, those actual changes from rep one to rep seven, you just feel ready. You feel more a- a- alert and ready to go in your workout. So the dynamic type of stretching, um, and I mentioned earlier on, you know, like what I've had to do to sort of increase my warmup focus, you know, I, I think that's more of what I try to do these days. Um, I try to be a little bit more alert to the fact that, you know, my body's not ready. A- when I was, when I was working with Antonio Brown, I remember like, he would spend 20 minutes, 30 minutes on all dynamic work. And I've never seen anybody spend that long on their dynamic work, but like he said, he just didn't feel right and ready to go unless he did a lot of that. And I mean, you know, his, his dynamic stretching routine would be a workout for most everybody, you know? I- it's crazy how, how much he did.

Andrew Huberman 1:05:04 These pro athletes are amazing.

Jeff Cavaliere 1:05:05 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:05:06 And, uh, you've, uh, had the great fortune of working with and improving their, their abilities. Um, but I can only imagine, uh, 'cause I also imagine he's pretty strong in the gym also.

Jeff Cavaliere 1:05:16 ... I mean, you know, it's al- it always amazes me the guys that make it to that level, no matter what sport they do, they're so gifted in everything, you know? Like, um, David Wright used to make me laugh all the time with the Mets because no matter what I... Ping pong, you know, like anything, he... Because of his hand-eye coordination, like anything, you know, great at. Jump rope, I remember he hadn't done a lot of jump rope, and I, I, I think jump rope's one of the best things you could do from a conditioning standpoint. It's actually is fairly interesting, it's not just, you know, um, it's not too harsh on the joints depending, you know, even though it's a ballistic move. And he wasn't... I have to admit, I, you know, if he listens to this, he's gonna want to kill me, but I, I wa- I was better at him, uh, than, uh, jump roping, one of the only things I could do. And then I gave him about five days and he completely blew me out of the water to the point where I could never keep up with him anymore. He made it look effortless. It's like that's the, where the athlete in someone comes out.

Andrew Huberman 1:06:10 Mm-hmm.

Jeff Cavaliere 1:06:11 No matter what they pick up, they're good at it. And I think that when you see guys like this in the gym, like their strength levels tend to be pretty damn good and their, and their abilities, their coordination, their, their everything just tends to sort of be good at that level, you know?

Andrew Huberman 1:06:23 Yeah.

Jeff Cavaliere 1:06:23 And it sort of amazes me. Why those guys can go pick up a golf club, you know, and go shoot 72, you know, and, and having never really played, you know? They're just, they're just naturally good at whatever they do.

Andrew Huberman 1:06:33 Yeah, I have a couple... I'm, I'm smiling 'cause I have a couple really close friends who did a number of years, some several decades, in the SEAL teams. And I don't know that their skill level at everything is so high as, as you're describing for athletes, but their level of competitiveness is beyond-

Jeff Cavaliere 1:06:48 (laughs) Right.

Andrew Huberman 1:06:48 I ocean swim with one. There's no chance that I'm gonna-

Jeff Cavaliere 1:06:50 Right.

Andrew Huberman 1:06:51 ... you know, out-swim Pat, ever, ever. He actually goes back and forth sometimes just to check up on me.

Jeff Cavaliere 1:06:56 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 1:06:56 Um, which I appreciate. Thank you, Pat. Um, I haven't been drowned yet. But the- but in addition to that, you know, we could play horseshoes, and it's like this switch that just flips on, and like, he's going to murder me at horseshoes.

Jeff Cavaliere 1:07:07 (laughs) Right, right, right.

Andrew Huberman 1:07:07 He's a very nice guy, right?

Jeff Cavaliere 1:07:08 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 1:07:08 In general, they tend to be very nice. But, but the level of competitiveness is kind of unreal.

Jeff Cavaliere 1:07:12 Well, they're, they're, they're trying to-

Andrew Huberman 1:07:12 They're selected for it.

Jeff Cavaliere 1:07:13 They're trying to beat themselves, they're not even trying to beat you.

Andrew Huberman 1:07:15 That's right. I'm not even in the competition.

Jeff Cavaliere 1:07:17 You're not even in the competition. You're not even there, you know?

Andrew Huberman 1:07:18 Yeah, exactly. Thank you.

Jeff Cavaliere 1:07:19 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 1:07:20 (laughs) . Now I won't feel so bad, or worse.

Andrew Huberman 1:07:23 Um, it's true, it's, it's a remarkable thing. I'm glad you mentioned jump roping. I, uh, used to skip rope for warmup for boxing.

Jeff Cavaliere 1:07:29 Mm-hmm, yep, of course.

Andrew Huberman 1:07:29 You know those different, like, three, three-minute rounds or something like that. Um, but I, I'm glad you brought it up, because, um, skipping rope is something that, uh, obviously has a cardiovascular component, there's the conditioning component, there's timing, and, and it is kind of interesting, right? You can-

Jeff Cavaliere 1:07:44 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:07:44 It's frustrating when you don't get it.

Jeff Cavaliere 1:07:45 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:07:45 Especially when it whips you in the air if you're using an improper rope.

Jeff Cavaliere 1:07:48 Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:07:48 I'm just curious if you could just give us a quick, um, skipping rope 101. Do you like to see people jumping with, um, both feet and toes? We'll, we'll link to a video if- I'm s- if there was one and I missed it. Do you like to see people doing high knees? Do you like s- people basically, like, shuffling? Uh, you wanna see people doing double Dutch? What do you want to see people doing, over time?

Jeff Cavaliere 1:08:05 Uh... All of the above. Maybe not the double Dutch, but all, all of the above. I mean, I think that, that's the cool thing about it, right? Like, once we sort of master the skill, 'cause for all