250 ‒ Training principles for longevity | Andy Galpin, Ph.D. (PART II)

1. 0:00 – 0:08

   Intro

   1. PAPeter Attia0:00

      [upbeat music] Hey, everyone. Welcome to "The Drive" podcast. I'm your host, Peter Attia.

2. 0:08 – 7:00

   Review of the function and organization of skeletal muscle

   1. PAPeter Attia0:10

      Andy, awesome to have you back for, um, what is very unlikely to be part two of two. Uh, this will just be part two of N, uh, where N is an integer greater than two, and it'll be TBD on what that looks like. Um, in our first discussion, which I, I think truthfully was pretty technical, uh, but I still think formed a very important basis for what we're gonna talk about today. So I, I predict that today's discussion will be a little less technical, but will assume that the viewer/listener has some familiarity with what we've talked about. But for those maybe who, A, listened to it, you know, a couple of months ago and have forgotten, or B, are not listening to it, I think it's probably worth investing a little bit of our time in going over some of the major concepts. So, um, feel free to diverge from kind of the, the line of questioning, but e- everything I [chuckles] wanna talk about right now is just to give people enough background so that we can get into the meat of, of, of a discussion that you and I have already spent some time planning. So, um, let's start by explaining what the cells of muscles look like and how they function.

   2. AGAndy Galpin1:20

      Yeah, sure. So when we say the term muscle, what we're typically referring to is a collective group. So when you think about like your quadricep or your thigh, that's actually four muscles there. That's why we call it a quad, right? So we say bicep, like how do you do bicep? So it's actually multiple bicep muscles in orientation insertion. So in general, the way that humans move is muscles will contract, and muscles actually at the end of them will come together to form a tendon. Those tendons actually connect to bone. So when you contract muscle, it pulls that connective tissue, the tendon, that pulls the bone, and you move. And so you've got muscles, you know, throughout your body, up and down. They have different orientations, and they have different responsibilities. So some are meant, uh, to be what we call anti-gravity. So this is to keep you up all day, and they don't produce a lot of force or speed, but they're meant to be non-fatigable. And others are the opposite, so explosion, power, propulsion. If you just look at like the lower shank, uh, so the calf muscles there, the gastrocnemius, that big one in the middle, if you point your toe to your face, that pops out at you. That's meant to be for power and sprinting and jumping, and the one that's actually lower, uh, is meant, near soleus, is meant to be on all day so that you can stand and walk all day and not get fatigued. Despite the fact that both of them come together to form the Achilles that wraps around the bottom of your heel, inserts the bottom of your foot, and that's what makes your foot go sort of up and down. So in general, muscle is meant to create movement. Muscle actually does a lot of other things though that are vital to health, including pumping fluid up and down. So, uh, blood will pool because of gravity towards the lower part of your body. Muscle contraction is in large part what squeezes the blood back up into your heart and into your lung there. Um, it is the amino acid reserve. So that's the place where you store amino acids, so that you can use them to create red blood cells or immune cells or anything else. And it's also the primary, primary place actually where you regulate blood glucose storage and, and all carbohydrates. So I could go on and on, but muscle in general has, um, a very important function in your body for movement there, and as well as signaling. So the last part to acknowledge here is we typically will call muscle, uh, an endocrine organ, meaning it'll actually send signals out through the body through what are called myokines or what some people will call exerkines if they're coming out as a response of exercise. And that's sending a signal to your liver or kidney or brain or lung or anywhere else. So at the big whole muscle level, is what we call it, that's the general function. Now within that, each individual muscle, so pick the soleus or whatever one you want, is actually made up of, of billions, if not more, individual muscle fibers. And those fibers or cells, that's the same actual term, um, myofiber, cell, fiber, I'll use those interchangeably. Those are actually just basically long cylinders. And so if you think about this like a ponytail. So if I don't have much hair [chuckles] left, you know, I'm in the same boat as you there, Peter. But if I had some, you'd see a big long ponytail, and you would call that one ponytail. Really, a ponytail is nothing but a collective whole bunch of individual hairs. And actually, you can think of skeletal muscle at least, uh, cardiac and smooth muscle are quite different. But skeletal muscle, um, it, it looks very similar to a hair. So it is a long, long cylinder. It's very strong. Um, in this case, it actually contracts where hair doesn't. But yeah, that's the basic, uh, function of that. And so within that, you have a whole bunch of organelle that do things. So, um, if you look at the whole muscle, what actually happens is that's surrounded by a bed of capillaries. And so if you talk about blood going into a muscle, and it comes in via a big artery, gonna go through a bunch of capillaries, and those capillaries are really surrounding and mixing in and out that whole ponytail. So they're kind of all over, and so they're circulating the, uh, around the individual fibers. And that's gonna get you nutrients in, like glucose or anything else, and get you waste products out, like carbon dioxide, et cetera. Right? So within that big long cylinder, the capillaries are around it. You've got a whole bunch of things, and probably the most pertinent is you've got what are called nuclei. So these are myonuclei. And so if you remember basic biology, the nucleus is what controls, uh, any cell. So most cells in the world have one nucleus. Skeletal muscle is unique because you've got infinite number of them basically spread throughout the duration of the muscle. And that gives you a lot of, uh, what we call plasticity. And so the more nuclei you have, the more control centers you have, the easier it is to respond to stressors, damage, re- re- uh, adaptations, et cetera. That's why skeletal muscle is so, uh, again, adaptable to various... Whether this is good stimuli or bad stimuli, like in the case of Uh, space flight or physical inactivity or whatever you want to be. So in addition to that, you've got, of course, your mitochondria, which you've, you know, spoken at length at over your, your career, and that's what's gonna be able to use a lot of your... or produce a lot of your cellular energy. And then you finally you've got what we call the contractile units, and so the things that make your muscle fibers contract together and, and squeeze on top of each other are actin and myosin. And so these are two molecules that kind of reach up. The myosin grabs the actin. It pulls it together, um, smashes it literally on top of itself, and that's why when you flex, say, a bicep muscle, it actually gains height because you're stacking things on top of each other, and that requires the muscle to go vertically. So that's, uh, I guess, the big picture of, of what muscles are and then what they actually look like at the cellular level.

   3. PAPeter Attia6:55

      Yeah, that was, that was much more efficient than I would have done it. Um, let's layer on another question.

3. 7:00 – 18:20

   Review of muscle fiber types

   1. PAPeter Attia7:00

      You drew a contrast between the soleus and the gastrocnemius, and although you didn't use the exact terms, you alluded to it, uh, that one is sort of slow to fatigue and one is fast to fatigue, which of course is now part of another division we would layer on this. So can you explain at that, uh, cellular level what the difference is between the gastrocnemius and the soleus?

   2. AGAndy Galpin7:27

      Sure. So if you were to think about this, um, we, we call it muscle fibers, you know, one-on-one, but really, um, there's distinction between them. So maybe we'll just take a quick jaunt back into history, and I won't make this too long, although I'd, I'd, I'd love to. Um, so all the way back to the invention of the microscope, uh, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, the famous guy who s- gets... Uh, many people discovered things, but you get it. He gets the credit. Uh, well, one of the first things he actually used that microscope for was he started looking at, uh, individual cell... He started looking at muscle actually in whales and in codfish and a bunch of other stuff, and he started to notice that some of these cells are really small, and some of them are really big. And that's the very first time we really started to functionally distinguish between, at that time, it was just sort of big fibers and small fibers. And then pretty quickly after that, he started to realize, well, some of them are really red, and some of them are more white. And so for a big number of, well, centuries really, we kind of distinguished muscle as these fiber type or these fibers, these cells are either red cells or white cells. And it took a long time to figure out why that mattered or what that meant. But eventually, it became clear that the ones that are red are red because they have more of those capillaries. They have more blood flow. They have more mitochondria. They have more iron. Like, all those things go into it, so they give an actual look of being red. The other ones have less of it. It actually didn't... We didn't know for a long time after that, though, functionally what that meant. And so i- i- if you were to look back in some old textbook or had an old, uh, you know, professor one from anatomy or something a long time ago, they might call fibers white fibers and red fibers. And so you'll hear them distinguished based on color. That's the first distinction. Well, as soon as histology came around and we started getting better microscopes and technology, we started to realize that, wait a minute, we can actually test the individual muscle fibers for their power output. So this is their contraction. So this is you take them out of the muscle. You put them in a Petri dish. You tie one end to a force transducer. You tie the other end to a fixed unit, and you put it in a whole bunch, a bath of calcium and ATP and a bunch of other stuff. And those fibers just start contracting unlimited, and you can actually measure how much force is being produced. And so now we went from distinguishing these fibers via color, red versus white, to now distinguishing them by their contractile properties. That's what that term means. So are you contracting with a lot of force or a small amount of force? And in fact, force wasn't really the distinguishing factor. It was speed. And so because of that, we started... The nomenclature evolved to now describe them as fast twitch or slow twitch, and that really specifically describes the twitch or the contraction speed. So two, two ways to distinguish the fibers now, color or contractile speed. And then eventually we started to figure out their enzymatic differences, and so the ones that had more mitochondria, uh, were better at using aerobic metabolism. So this is carbohydrate and fat metabolism. Those are both, you know, aerobically needed. And the ones that were white or fast were much better at using glycolysis from the anaerobic part of the equation. So this is in the cytoplasm outside of the mitochondria. And so now we can distinguish these things via enzymatic properties, and so you can call them a fast twitch fiber. You can call them a white or a red fiber, or you can call them, uh, aerobic or anaerobic or oxidative or glycolytic. And so a- again, depending on if you ever had, uh, maybe some of this stuff in high school or college class, you might have heard them described as fast oxidative or fast glycolytic, and there's this like, well, why does all this nomenclature exist? And that's exactly why it all happens. And so to come back to the, the beginning here, this is where it's gonna really matter. Initially, when this distinction was drawn, it looked like there was two types. There was type one and type two. That's just what they called them. And type one is the slow twitch, uh, the red fibers, the oxidative fibers. Type two were the fast twitch, all the opposite, right? Well, in the 1950s-ish area, we started to figure out, well, wait a minute, there's actually a third distinct fiber type, and that fiber type was more closely aligned, uh, to the fast twitch fibers than the slow twitch. And so we started to delineate a little bit more. So you have your type one, and they'll stay way over here. And then over here you have a type 2A and a type 2B. All right? Again, they are as distinct and different enough from each other that they need to be called their own thing, but they're closer together than they are close to the f- the slow twitch fiber. So instead of... I don't know why they called it type one and type two and not type three. It's because they wanted to make sure people recognized they're really close to each other, but they're distinct, so we'll call them 2A and 2B there. Well, some years passed, and we actually eventually realized that humans don't have 2B. Um, so again, depending on the textbook you, uh, the actual physiology book you might currently be using, they might still be using the nomenclature of type 2B Despite the fact that we've had genetic information since 1990, that humans don't even have the gene to express 2b. So like 2b is just a non-starter with humans. However, we do have what's called a 2x, and so this is a sort of, um... And this is actually, this is foundation stuff that you're gonna need later in the conversation when we talk about some of the, the second half. Um, so humans, to summarize, have type 1, type 2a, and type 2x. All right? Well, felines and animals and bears and stuff, we've done biopsies and stuff on bears, uh, ha- do have the 2b. Um, murines have 2b. And so most other mammals have four distinct ones. They have a really, really fast one. These b's are ultra-fast. Uh, 2x is pretty fast. 2a is slower, but fast. And then 1 is slower. So if you run the entire continuum, it pretty much lines up. So the ones that are pure type 1 have generally the more mitochondria, and they are less fatiguable. They don't produce as much force, um, relative to s- well, they do relative to size, but, uh, they're slower, and they do that. As you move to 2a and to 2x, they become faster, but they become more fatiguable because they're more reliant upon, um, glycolysis and, and carbohydrate metabolism. So that's generally what we're looking at with fiber types. So when you ask the distinction between how does the soleus and the gastroc compare, the gastroc in most humans is something like 60 to 70 or maybe even up to 80% 2a fibers, and so they are very, very fast. Um, and so the gastroc will, again, cause a, a, a, a fast contraction, um, but they won't hold on for very long because they get fatiguable. The soleus can be up to 90% slow twitch, and so this is a great comparison because, um, most muscles in your body are some combination of fast and slow twitch, but the soleus and the gastroc are probably the best example of the two extremes. Um, if you look in animals like mice, you can see a soleus that is 100% slow twitch. But for what, for a number of reasons, humans never get that far down the line. And so if somebody was... If I biopsied somebody in the soleus and they were 80% slow twitch, I'd be like, "Well, that's, that's pretty high." Um, and if they were 70% fast twitch in the gastroc, I would say that's pretty high. So, um, that's, uh, what you can sort of expect in terms of, um, muscle physiology differences between the soleus and the gastroc. And again, why that functionally matters, if you have a compromised soleus, you're probably less likely to be standing. You're gonna sit. You're probably gonna be less generally physically active. Uh, if the soleus is compromised, it's hard to move fast and powerfully.

   3. PAPeter Attia14:58

      How modifiable is that distribution? Is it purely genetic, or is there a trainable component to the ratio of fast to slow twitch fiber in a given muscle?

   4. AGAndy Galpin15:11

      It's extremely trainable. Um, it just comes down to exposure, which means stimuli and time. And the more stimuli you give it, the more time you give it, the more, uh, it will change. Now, like anything else, an asymptote exists here. So if you are very untrained, right, and, and you're pretty inactive physically, maybe even take new to extreme. You go into a cast for two months or space flight, and you're ex- like, literally inactive. That movement happens faster. Uh, if you are pretty trained and well-trained and, and months and years go on, you start changing really, really slowly because you get closer to the end of the spectrum. But there is really, I mean, functionally no limit to how far they'll go given enough total exposure. Um, to put you into, like, some realistic numbers, um, if you were to do... The soleus is kind of hard actually. The gastroc is a better one. If you were, say, completely untrained and, and you hadn't exercised for, say, five plus years, uh, and then you did eight weeks of exercise, I don't even care what it is, it really doesn't matter that much-

   5. PAPeter Attia16:12

      Hm

   6. AGAndy Galpin16:12

      ... I would bet 10 to 15% change in fiber type in that, in that kind of a time span. It wouldn't be that crazy.

   7. PAPeter Attia16:19

      And sorry, just to make sure I understand what's actually happening there, Andy, is it turnover? Meaning are you literally just expressing more type 2 and expressing less type 1, so that if you compare the muscle biopsies across those eight weeks, you've actually just displaced two into one due to making new cells and apoptosis of the old cells?

   8. AGAndy Galpin16:45

      Uh, okay, really good question. N- generally, no. Um, so there's this idea called hyperplasia. Uh, so hyperplasia is when you would grow a new cell, and that is very, very uncommon in normal human situations. Uh, it can happen with extreme eccentric training. Um, looks like it probably happens with a lot of exogenous testosterone use over many, many years. Um, but outside of, like, sort of extreme examples, um, you can get it in cell culture, and you can get it in animal models, but in human, like, normal situations, hyperplasia is very uncommon. Um, so what more happens is the current fiber type itself will transition, uh-

   9. PAPeter Attia17:23

      Mm

   10. AGAndy Galpin17:23

       ... its type, which is sort of tricky because this, like... I'm not sure how far you want to go here, but the reality of it is, remember how I said there's three fiber types? That's not actually true either. There's a whole combination of what we call hybrids, and so if you were to take any one individual muscle cell, it might be entirely, say, 2a on one end of the cell. But it might be what we call a 1 2a. So this is a single muscle fiber that expresses both type 1 and type 2. Um, so i- in... Depending on the, the s- the length of the cell, it may be different in different spots. So they're not always the same type. So, uh, the same thing can happen with 2a 2x, by the way. That, that is... In fact, you can have a triple hybrid. You can have a 1 2a 2x. You can have all three being co-expressed.

   11. PAPeter Attia18:09

       So they're kind of pluripotent-

   12. AGAndy Galpin18:10

       Totally

   13. PAPeter Attia18:10

       ... and they basically have the potential to differentially express themselves based on stimulus?

   14. AGAndy Galpin18:16

       Yep. Or lack of.

   15. PAPeter Attia18:17

       Yep.

   16. AGAndy Galpin18:18

       Yeah.

   17. PAPeter Attia18:19

       Um,

4. 18:20 – 30:42

   Hypertrophy: changes in muscle fibers and the underlying mechanisms that make a muscle grow

   1. PAPeter Attia18:20

      okay, let's talk a little bit about how everything you just said factors into some of the metrics we're going to talk about vis-a-vis different type of performance in athletes. Let's start with hypertrophy. If you took a biopsy of my biceps, and then you took a biopsy of a professional bodybuilder's biceps, how do our muscle fibers look different? Are his significantly at the level of the cell and the fiber significantly that much bigger? Does he have more of them, but they're about the same size, but in aggregate they're bigger in cross-section, of course? Is it a combination of both?

   2. AGAndy Galpin19:06

      Well, this is a lot of really interesting questions. Let's use the VL, uh, the vastus lateralis, the, the outside quad muscle as a better example, just 'cause we have thousands of biopsy studies from there. All right? Um, so you asked a lot of really cool questions. Um, okay, a couple things to understand. N- number one, counting muscle fibers total is a very challenging thing, 'cause the only true way to do it is I need to take your entire muscle-

   3. PAPeter Attia19:31

      Take everything out, yeah

   4. AGAndy Galpin19:32

      ... [laughs] cut in half and count it. Now, we can do some estimates. You can take whole muscle size, take the average size of the muscle fibers, and then-

   5. PAPeter Attia19:41

      Yep

   6. AGAndy Galpin19:42

      ... account for our fluid and stuff, but that's sorta tricky at best. So we have good data on these from animal models, cats, actually dogs, and things like that. Humans, it's challenging. Um, in general, fast-twitch fibers ... And let's just keep it fast and slow for now to, to not confuse people, are generally bigger than slow-twitch fibers by diameter, so they're generally wider than them. But when you throw training into the equation, that all goes out the window. Um, I have, I have analyzed I can't tell you how many thousands of slow-twitch fibers, and they are bigger than fast-twitch fibers in that individual person.

   7. PAPeter Attia20:18

      Now, does that tell us anything about that individual? For example, if you look at an extreme athlete, you know, like an endurance athlete who is getting as much potential out of their slow-twitch muscle fibers as possible, is that generally the scenario where you will see remarkable hypertrophy of the Type 1 fiber?

   8. AGAndy Galpin20:37

      That's exactly what it is.

   9. PAPeter Attia20:38

      Okay.

   10. AGAndy Galpin20:39

       Yep. And so one of the things we see happen is, um, fiber type-specific hypertrophy with your classic endurance training. So throw kinda intervals and other things out the window for now, just because scientifically it's hard to do. But if you're your steady state runner, cyclist, swimmer, rower, things like that, um, I, I would generally be looking for their slow-twitch fibers to be very large.

   11. PAPeter Attia20:59

       Mm-hmm.

   12. AGAndy Galpin21:00

       Uh, if, if not the same size as their fast-twitch fibers, oftentimes-

   13. PAPeter Attia21:03

       Right

   14. AGAndy Galpin21:03

       ... larger. At a baseline, it's not the case. Um, now at the... Like, when you're actually pulling out one muscle fiber at a time, you'll see some really wild stuff. Um, so that can happen individually. But on an average, that would, that would be your answer. If you were to invoke any kind of strength training, and it doesn't really... Actually, you can distinguish between powerlifters or bodybuilders or any of these things. It won't actually really matter because at the level of the cell-

   15. PAPeter Attia21:28

       Mm

   16. AGAndy Galpin21:28

       ... while we're gonna distinguish between all those, like, probably here pretty soon, at the level of cell it's not that different. It, it's close enough to being the same thing if you compared it to how different it is than steady state cycling or something.

   17. PAPeter Attia21:41

       Yeah.

   18. AGAndy Galpin21:41

       And so in both those cases, I would basically say, yeah, the 2A fiber's gonna be very large. But you wouldn't be able to pull a 2A fiber and be like, "Oh, that's a bodybuilder, and that's a powerlifter, and that's a weightlifter," you would have absolutely no chance, uh, to do that. The only thing that kinda throws a wrench here is, uh, specifically exogenous testosterone. Um, that will change the game in a number of important ways. Specifically satellite cells are, are gonna be changed, and total muscle, uh, fiber size is probably gonna get exceptionally large, um, which will throw it out there, but-

   19. PAPeter Attia22:13

       So again, just to make sure I understand, if you're gonna compare my VLO to the VLO of, you know, Jay Cutler, right? So world-class bodybuilder.

   20. AGAndy Galpin22:23

       Yeah.

   21. PAPeter Attia22:23

       If you do an ultrasound, there's no question that the total size of his muscle is so much bigger than mine.

   22. AGAndy Galpin22:31

       Yeah.

   23. PAPeter Attia22:31

       If you can start yanking fibers out, is it... It sounds like it's he probably has more fibers, probably because he's using exogenous testosterone and I'm not, but it also sounds like his Type 2 fibers are bigger than my Type 2 fibers.

   24. AGAndy Galpin22:45

       I, I, I would, I would be very comfortable with that prediction.

   25. PAPeter Attia22:48

       Yeah.

   26. AGAndy Galpin22:48

       They, they will be very, very large.

   27. PAPeter Attia22:50

       Yeah.

   28. AGAndy Galpin22:50

       We actually, um, we biopsied one individual, uh, powerlifter/bodybuilder, and, uh, his... Some of his fibers were so large the closest comparator we had were rhinoceros muscle fibers.

   29. PAPeter Attia23:01

       [laughs]

   30. AGAndy Galpin23:02

       [laughs] Like, they were so... Not all of them, but a handful of them where they were so large we were like, "What?" I mean, it's like-
5. 30:42 – 33:38

   Defining sarcoplasmic hypertrophy and how it relates to the number of reps in a set

   1. PAPeter Attia30:42

      Um, Andy, go back to the sarcoplasmic hypertrophy for a moment. Uh, just give me the background story on that. I was totally unaware of that, uh, 'cause it's been, you know, it's, it's been a while since I've been, uh... You know, when I was in high school, of course, all I did was read Muscle & Fitness and, you know, bro science was my life. Um, but I've been-

   2. AGAndy Galpin30:57

      Yeah

   3. PAPeter Attia30:57

      ... I've been a little away from it. T- tell me what it was that the bodybuilding community was, uh, proposing that science, you know, basically only really came to recognize.

   4. AGAndy Galpin31:08

      Sure. So in general, um, for a long time, myself and many other exercise scientists, uh, were sort of purporting that, uh, if you wanted to gain muscle hypertrophy, eight to 12 repetitions per set is the optimal range. But yet if you look at bodybuilders, they're doing all kinds of other stuff. They'll do sets of 20 or 30 or they'll do different styles of training, and according to us scientists, like, that, that was not hypertrophy. That was muscular endurance, or that was strength, and those would not result in hypertrophy. And then eventually, more and more research came out and, uh, Brad Schoenfeld did much of this work. He's, he's incredibly prolific. And Brad showed, well, actually, hypertrophy, uh, is pretty much equal from anywhere between five repetitions per set to up to 30 repetitions per set if other things are equated for.

   5. PAPeter Attia31:58

      Pr- pr- provided the RPE gets to the same point, right? The, the... Or reps in reserve-

   6. AGAndy Galpin32:02

      Yeah

   7. PAPeter Attia32:02

      ... has to basically... You have to get pretty close to failure. Not failure necessarily, but, but you can't, you know-

   8. AGAndy Galpin32:08

      Exactly

   9. PAPeter Attia32:08

      ... at the end of 30, you need to be hurting as much as you would be at the end of seven.

   10. AGAndy Galpin32:13

       Yeah. And it's very hard-

   11. PAPeter Attia32:14

       Yeah

   12. AGAndy Galpin32:14

       ... because you're gonna start hurting-

   13. PAPeter Attia32:16

       Much sooner

   14. AGAndy Galpin32:16

       ... at, like, 15.

   15. PAPeter Attia32:17

       Yeah, exactly.

   16. AGAndy Galpin32:17

       [laughs] You gotta just bear with it.

   17. PAPeter Attia32:20

       Yeah. It's much more time under tension, and in some ways it's also more taxing to your cardiovascular system, depending on the lift.

   18. AGAndy Galpin32:26

       Yep. It certainly can be.

   19. PAPeter Attia32:27

       Yeah.

   20. AGAndy Galpin32:27

       Certainly can be. Um, so what the bodybuilding community would say are things like, "Hey, if you lift in this fashion, um, five to 10 reps, you might increase contractile units, and that's why you're getting stronger. However, if you were to go higher repetition ranges, it's gonna be coming from sarcoplasmic hy- uh, hypertrophy." And why that matters is that's almost exclusively explained by increases in fluid retention, and so it is non-contractile hypertrophy. So this is why you can get bigger, but you're not getting strong.

   21. PAPeter Attia32:59

       Just as strong, yeah.

   22. AGAndy Galpin33:01

       Right. So that's, that's the functional distinction. And again, that's, like, something that we were just like, "No, no, no, no, no, it doesn't happen." Um-

   23. PAPeter Attia33:08

       It's super interesting

   24. AGAndy Galpin33:08

       ... there had been, like, a couple of papers, but, but the technology wasn't there, honestly, to measure it until, until some assays came around and, and Mike really got that stuff going and it was like, "Oh, crap." And now it looks like the story's actually pretty clear, um, of, of the sort of... And it... He- Mike has a wonderful review paper, uh, on this stuff, and you can actually see a graph he's developed, and you can look at sort of when hyp- sarcoplasmic hypertrophy happens, when contractile happens, and what happens over the course of your training experience. Um, and I think actually spl- explains what's happening pretty nicely.

6. 33:38 – 47:29

   Training for maximum strength: what we can learn from powerlifters and a hypothetical training plan

   1. PAPeter Attia33:38

      All right. I think that was the perfect intro to what I think would be a really elegant framework for now how to talk about a series of rows and a series of columns that make up a matrix, right? So w- in our first podcast, we spoke about the different types of athletes, and then we talked about the different variables that go into training stress. What we didn't do, because there simply wasn't enough time, was fill in that matrix, and that's what I'd love to do today. So [lip smacks] what I went back to is what are the different phenotypes of interest? So we're gonna go with a powerlifter, an Olympic weightlifter, a strongman, a bodybuilder, a CrossFit athlete, a track and field athlete, and then we're going to look at them according to, you know, the following. How... If you're, if you're training to be specifically that athlete, what's your frequency of training? What's your intensity? For example, as a percent of 1RM or V02 max. What's the volume you're doing? How are you thinking about sets and reps? What's the rest recovery? And is there any other sort of skill-based training adaptation that's necessary? I acknowledge this might take us a while, but, you know, I think this is a very elegant way to synthesize so many of the concepts that were in the first episode of our, of our sit-down. Um, and I think in many ways this is kind of the rubber hitting the road. Now, I'll tell you that my ultimate goal in doing this, Andy, is to now extract from each of those phenotypes the learnings for what I consider personally the most important phenotype, which is not powerlifter, Olympic weightlifter, strongman, bodybuilder, et cetera, but rather what I call the centenarian decathlete. In other words, even though I'm only 50, so much of how I think about training is for the 90-year-old version of me, right? What do I wanna be able to do at 90? I have a pretty good sense of what it is. It's quite audacious. What am I need to... What do I need to do for the next 40 years to make sure that at 90 I'm functioning, to be honest with you, like a very fit 70 year old? That's the aspiration. So we'll end with that if we have time. If not, that'll e- easily be part three. Um, but let's, um, let's start with the order that you presented them in, which was starting with the powerlifter. So again, just for folks listening, powerlifting is a very, very specific sport. It consists of three and only three lifts, and you are scored on the basis of the total amount of weight you move in a deadlift, a bench press, and a squat, and that's it. Nobody cares what you look like. Nobody cares how fast you can do that. Nobody even cares how many reps you can do, right? There's nothing that goes into it except it's a number A plus B plus C equals total, and that's it. Now, those guys are strong as hell for what they do. Um, maybe give people a sense of numbers. Like, pick two different weight classes and explain to people just how strong a powerlifter is in those three lifts.

   2. AGAndy Galpin36:55

      Yeah, sure. So r- to really clarify, when we say strength, uh, you could also think about force. I'll say those interchangeably. And, uh, uh, while in the real world, if somebody were to be able to drag a train or something, I'd be like, "Wow, that's a strong person." But technically, maximal strength is what's the maximal amount you can do one time. And, and I know you said that a second ago, but I really wanna make sure that-

   3. PAPeter Attia37:21

      Yep

   4. AGAndy Galpin37:21

      ... the audience heard that correctly.

   5. PAPeter Attia37:21

      Yeah, 'cause the name-

   6. AGAndy Galpin37:22

      So when we say p-

   7. PAPeter Attia37:22

      ... powerlifter is a bit misleading here, which I think you're about to explain why.

   8. AGAndy Galpin37:27

      That's exactly right. Um, power, the difference between force and power is speed. And so another way to say this is if you take speed, multiply that by force or strength. That's how you get power. And so implicit in that is power is comprised of both strength and speed. So there's a speed component to it. In the case of the, the exercises you listed in powerlifting, there's no speed component to it really. They're trying to move as fast as they can, but they're not scored on speed. There's no clock. It doesn't matter at all how fast they move. It is explicitly a test of pure and absolute strength. What is the most amount you can lift one time? There are three different exercises we try it in, but you don't get to do it for three or four reps, or it's not a, you know, who can complete it the fastest. It is who's the maximum thing you can lift. So to give you some examples, uh, I've worked with, uh, Stefanie Cohen a little bit, not much, but just a little bit in my career, uh, and she has 25 or 27 world records. Uh, one of her competitions, I think she weighed 119 pounds, and I think she deadlifted 525 in that competition. She's deadlifted 585, I believe. So getting in the stratosphere of, you know, five, well over 5X body weight here.

   9. PAPeter Attia38:40

      [laughs]

   10. AGAndy Galpin38:42

       Which is absurd. Um, you know, she's, she prob- deadlift is her thing, so, but she's still probably benching 200-something and, and squatting well over the 400s, so, um, as a 120-pound, you know, female.

   11. PAPeter Attia38:55

       That's, that's s-

   12. AGAndy Galpin38:55

       So that's, that's pretty strong

   13. PAPeter Attia38:56

       ... simply unbelievable, actually.

   14. AGAndy Galpin38:59

       I- it's totally unbelievable.

   15. PAPeter Attia39:00

       I, I was deadlifting today, right? Today just happens to be deadlift day for me, and i- because I no longer can... Like, I peaked at 18. It's a little depressing, right? Like, I just-

   16. AGAndy Galpin39:10

       [laughs]

   17. PAPeter Attia39:11

       That was, that was my peak in deadlifting.

   18. AGAndy Galpin39:12

       So far. So far.

   19. PAPeter Attia39:13

       Well, I mean, I, I don't know that I even care to lift as much as I did, but, but now I do different things, right? Like, so today, the main set was four rounds of one minute, as many reps as possible with 315.

   20. AGAndy Galpin39:27

       Ooh.

   21. PAPeter Attia39:27

       So it's a, it's a different stress.

   22. AGAndy Galpin39:28

       Ooh.

   23. PAPeter Attia39:28

       Make no mistake about it. It's un-

   24. AGAndy Galpin39:30

       [laughs]

   25. PAPeter Attia39:30

       It's, it, it hurts in a totally different way. Um, but it's, yeah, do 315 as many times as you can in 60 seconds, rest three minutes, and keep doing that over and over again. But, like, there's no way I'm gonna be-

   26. AGAndy Galpin39:42

       I, I hope Beth got a raise or got fired for that, one of the two.

   27. PAPeter Attia39:44

       [laughs] There, there's no way I'm doing-

   28. AGAndy Galpin39:45

       Who am I programming for?

   29. PAPeter Attia39:46

       No, actually, I told Beth after, and she was like, "What was your intention with this?" [laughs]

   30. AGAndy Galpin39:50

       [laughs]
7. 47:29 – 1:01:40

   Ideal reps, volume, and load for the powerlifter

   1. PAPeter Attia47:29

      If they said, "Andy, I'm willing to be in the weight room four days a week 'cause I'm, uh, I'm really optimizing on this." If, if I'm gonna be in the weight room four days a week, are you basically gonna figure out a split where one-

   2. AGAndy Galpin47:39

      Mm-hmm

   3. PAPeter Attia47:39

      ... you know, you get three of each in those eight sessions or something to that effect?

   4. AGAndy Galpin47:44

      You would want to... I'll, I'll tell people to look into what's called conjugate. Right? So this is the... There's many forms of this, but this would be the Westside Barbell Louie Simmons form of conjugate, and that's almost exactly what they describe. Right? So it's a little bit of pure strength work at the beginning. There's a muscular, uh, endurance phase, basically. Um, uh, there's a speed phase to it, and then there's a strength phase to it, and they just build that in, and they actually just sort of rotate it through. Bench squat, deadlift, bench squat, and they just power it through that way. So that's a very easy model.

   5. PAPeter Attia48:13

      A- and sorry, you're, you're saying that, that they would do that in any given workout or across the week it's spread out that way?

   6. AGAndy Galpin48:19

      Sorry, yeah, across the week.

   7. PAPeter Attia48:20

      Okay.

   8. AGAndy Galpin48:21

      So basically you'd walk in the gym, you're gonna do a max deadlift, and then you're gonna do some assistance work in your low back or your glutes, your hamstrings, or whatever is needed. And then the next day you come in, it's maybe a max bench, and then tricep work, shoulder work-

   9. PAPeter Attia48:33

      Mm-hmm

   10. AGAndy Galpin48:33

       ... rear delts, neck, or whatever, et cetera.

   11. PAPeter Attia48:35

       Yep.

   12. AGAndy Galpin48:36

       And then the day you come in, y- y- you know, you kind of follow it that way. Um, so that'd be very, very effective, and they're not necessarily... Anyways, yeah.

   13. PAPeter Attia48:44

       Okay. No, no, this is, this is super interesting. Okay, so, uh, uh, the next question is, um, [clears throat] is the only time you're gonna have this athlete moving insanely heavy weights in the three formal lifts? Or do you have them do very heavy things that are accessories? So I'll give you an example.

   14. AGAndy Galpin49:00

       Yeah.

   15. PAPeter Attia49:00

       Do you have them do very heavy hip thrusters, or very heavy incline bench press, or very heavy military press, or very heavy front squats, i.e., things that they are not going to compete in, but have a high degree of overlap with what they're competing in?

   16. AGAndy Galpin49:15

       Specificity wins here.

   17. PAPeter Attia49:17

       So you're gonna say no for... Because you're not a professional athlete who has all the time in the world, just do the lift.

   18. AGAndy Galpin49:24

       I would say stick mostly to the lift.

   19. PAPeter Attia49:27

       Okay.

   20. AGAndy Galpin49:28

       Now, even for this non-person who's not, because they're not a professional athlete, you could make the argument they need variation more actually.

   21. PAPeter Attia49:35

       Mm.

   22. AGAndy Galpin49:35

       Because who really cares if they optimize their strength gain? I'd rather push it a little bit more towards overall safety, and variation will give you that because it's less overuse of the same movement pattern, the same loading pattern. The more variation you get, the less specificity, so the less direct adaptation, but the less likelihood of overuse. So in this particular person, I would probably do that. But if we really said this, I would say, "Here." Maybe I'll say it this way. The core of our, our day when we come in is going to be that exact movement. It's gonna be a, you know, barbell back squat in your stance, the way that you're gonna compete. Great. Certainly within maybe the eight weeks prior to this competition. Outside of that though, when we call off season, we would introduce variation.

   23. PAPeter Attia50:18

       Mm-hmm.

   24. AGAndy Galpin50:20

       Do other stuff. Um, while they're in that specificity phase, though, we might do our primary lift, is what we kind of call it, and then after that we would do a ton of accessories. So we might do our hard work on our barbell, uh, back squat, and then maybe we go to a goblet squat. Maybe we do split squat. Maybe we do lateral lunges, and we would do other stuff, reverse hypers and things like that. So you would, we wanna use all those, but those would be what we call accessories, uh, or supporting stuff, and you would probably go to higher repetition ranges for those. So you would, you wouldn't do a max effort step up, right? You might do-

   25. PAPeter Attia50:51

       Right

   26. AGAndy Galpin50:51

       ... a set to five, eight, something like that, to really support the joints and make everything feel good, but you keep your pure, pure strength work to that core lift.

   27. PAPeter Attia51:00

       And when you're in that, let's just pick one. Let's just pick the deadlift, for example. What's the rep range you're gonna have them working in? At what point... Is there a rep range, is there a number of reps that is so high that it's getting you too far away from max strength?

   28. AGAndy Galpin51:13

       Five is sort of the number. Five and less.

   29. PAPeter Attia51:15

       Okay.

   30. AGAndy Galpin51:16

       You get, starting past five, you start losing, uh, force production.
8. 1:01:40 – 1:07:07

   What should powerlifters do on their off days?

   1. AGAndy Galpin1:01:40

      Um-

   2. PAPeter Attia1:01:40

      S- so let's, let's, before we leave the powerlifter, I wanna th- bring a few other things into this. So again, we're not in this discussion specifically optimizing on total health, right? We're really-

   3. AGAndy Galpin1:01:51

      Correct. Correct

   4. PAPeter Attia1:01:51

      ... optimizing around this person being a powerlifter. So, so now I come back and I say, "Andy, okay, I got it, man. I'm all in on this. I'm gonna do four days a week, and I'm gonna, you know, do the n- the, you know, I'm gonna basically do three to five exercises, sets, reps, et cetera." Um, but I said, "Hey, look, on the other, uh, four days, or the other three days a week, uh, is it cool if I do a bunch of cardio?" A- and again, I'm not talking about this through the lens of health. I'm saying, will it make me a better powerlifter, or would I be better off-

   5. AGAndy Galpin1:02:19

      Uh, make you a better powerlifter? No.

   6. PAPeter Attia1:02:22

      Yeah, exactly.

   7. AGAndy Galpin1:02:22

      No.

   8. PAPeter Attia1:02:22

      So, so what would you advise that I do on my off days if the objective is maximizing my strength?

   9. AGAndy Galpin1:02:29

      So there's interesting, um, when I was kicking around these scenes a lot, uh, powerlifters were notorious for being the laziest sons of ... you ever seen in your life, right? Like, if they're not lifting one rep max, they are, they're gonna be circling Walmart for two and a half hours to get a closer parking spot. Like, no-

   10. PAPeter Attia1:02:46

       [laughs]

   11. AGAndy Galpin1:02:47

       Like [laughs] like, that, that is not a joke. I've been in that Jeep. I've been in that Jeep and just driving around, and you're just like, "Oh my God." Just like saving every calorie, right? Okay, great. Um, I think more recently people have, in that community started to realize, like, I need some level of fitness, 'cause I can't handle the training volume. I can't get through my... If you're s- pouring sweat getting through your warmup and tying your shoes, y- you, you probably shouldn't be doing one rep maxes all day. Like, you need to get fit first, right?

   12. PAPeter Attia1:03:14

       [laughs]

   13. AGAndy Galpin1:03:15

       Um, that's, they have to have some level of fitness. So what I would say is this: Um, do, do the t- stuff we talked about. Maybe finish each one of those workouts with a set of eight to 10 or 12 just to pump a little bit of volume in there. That'll get you in a little, a tiny bit of fitness will be achieved kind of from that stuff. On your off days, if you truly wanna maximize strength and you're fit enough, then just rest. Uh, do other stuff, maintenance, you know, mobility, you know, breathwork, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, all the other recovery stuff, just as hedge, as heavy you can. If you're just antsy, gotta move, gotta move, gotta move, fine, um, but this is be like a zone two or lower movement, right? Just don't do much work, 'cause every amount of work you're doing is just contributing to systemic fatigue. And remember, uh, it's not just about thing, doing things like preserving muscle glycogen, which you have to do, but it's not a huge deal if we're doing, say, three sets of three. It's not gonna drain you of that much muscle glycogen. But your nervous system requires carbohydrates for metabolism. Um, everything else has gotta be optimized here, and that stuff takes a long time to recover. We gotta restore muscle glycogen and phosphocreatine and, and ATP. All that has to happen. So there's just no reason that y- it would give you an advantage to do more endurance work in between as long as you have some baseline fitness, and that's the one time where people do see gains from it, is g- again, 'cause they're so untrained.

   14. PAPeter Attia1:04:46

       Mm-hmm.

   15. AGAndy Galpin1:04:47

       Uh, you're so out of, out of shape, if you will, uh, that they feel better. They can train more. They can train harder. They can recover faster because they have an aerobic system. So that caveat aside, rest.

   16. PAPeter Attia1:04:57

       I remember when I was in high school, the gym I worked out in, um, which was a, a powerlifting gym, which is why I got into it, but really my primary goal was training for boxing, so I was doing infinitely-

   17. AGAndy Galpin1:05:07

       Sure

   18. PAPeter Attia1:05:07

       ... more volume. And the powerlifters, their main, they would mainly train in the evenings, so I think it was Tuesday, Friday evenings or something. It's exactly as you described. I s- first of all, the two things that stand out to me even to this day, you know, 50 years later, um... I'm being a bit facetious. It was only 32 years ago.

   19. AGAndy Galpin1:05:24

       [laughs]

   20. PAPeter Attia1:05:24

       Um, one is the obvious, how incredibly and insanely strong these men were, and two was how little they did.

   21. AGAndy Galpin1:05:32

       [laughs]

   22. PAPeter Attia1:05:34

       Like, I couldn't believe how little they did.

   23. AGAndy Galpin1:05:37

       Yeah.

   24. PAPeter Attia1:05:38

       They would come in, they would put their slippers on, put their suits on, chalk up, do a set, rest for what seemed like an hour, do another set, rest for what seemed like an hour, do another set, and leave.

   25. AGAndy Galpin1:05:55

       Yeah.

   26. PAPeter Attia1:05:55

       And admittedly, they were lifting cars in there.

   27. AGAndy Galpin1:05:59

       Yeah, yeah.

   28. PAPeter Attia1:05:59

       They were so damn strong. But I just remember thinking like, "How can you do so little?" But I think you're answering that question. In what, in what they were doing, that's, every single match has to go into burning for that flame.

   29. AGAndy Galpin1:06:17

       Has to. Now r- I mean, think about this. You're trying to put 1,000 pounds on your back. There's just no room for a percentage of fatigue. There, there's nothing. I mean, it's, the consequences are quite dire here, right? But even if it's not, um... Oh, think about it this way. Even though, say, 1,000 pounds represents one perc- uh, uh, o- their one rep max, it's 100%, and you could do 250 pounds, and that's your one rep max. This is not the same thing. It's not the same thing because even though it's both 100% of your one rep max, there's an absolute load that is on a physical human body, uh, that is not, does not scale. And so, like, there is a major difference.

   30. PAPeter Attia1:07:00

       That's right. The connective tissue is not scaling linearly at all here, right?
9. 1:07:07 – 1:11:00

   Are there consequences of powerlifting on long-term health?

   1. PAPeter Attia1:07:07

      that much different from mine.

   2. AGAndy Galpin1:07:09

      Correct. They're a little bit, but not that-

   3. PAPeter Attia1:07:11

      Yeah, exactly

   4. AGAndy Galpin1:07:11

      ... much different.

   5. PAPeter Attia1:07:11

      No, they're not 4X

   6. AGAndy Galpin1:07:12

      So when they go do their... Yeah, when they go do their heavy squat day or their deadlift day- Remember, if they're, if they can squat 1,000 pounds, do you know what they're doing for 70%? [laughs] Like, that's a 700-pound squat day. And so, like, those are their light reps. Those are their, you know, maintenance reps. Uh, and they're still putting that weight... So that load is... It just takes so much more rest than when you do your 70%, and you can come back tomorrow and squat and be fine 'cause it was 220 pounds. Um, so that relativeness doesn't scale.

   7. PAPeter Attia1:07:42

      Yeah.

   8. AGAndy Galpin1:07:42

      And even if you're talking to people about people that aren't, like, crazy strong-

   9. PAPeter Attia1:07:45

      Yeah

   10. AGAndy Galpin1:07:45

       ... let's say they're a 700-pound squatter. That's still absurdly heavy, and their, their, their practice reps are 520 pounds. Like, that's just, that's just a ton of load on a human body, and that takes a lot to recover from.

   11. PAPeter Attia1:07:57

       Before we go on to the Olympic weightlifter, l- l- let's pause for a moment here and just ask the question, w- what do you think is the long-term consequence in, uh, in, in a powerlifter? Uh, uh, is it the case that, look, if your mechanics are great, you can live a perfectly long, healthy life that is free of orthopedic disability in the final decade of your life, or do you believe that at some point if you're really putting 500-plus pounds on your back repeatedly, the probability of injury is high enough... And I don't mean acute injury, I just mean the chronic wear and tear, you know, that, you know what, the likelihood that you're gonna make it into the last decade of your life without significant limitations brought on by either spine or joint injury are, are pretty high. Like, w- what's your take on that, having watched a number of athletes go through this?

   12. AGAndy Galpin1:08:59

       So scientifically, we don't have really any data to speak of, so this is all anecdotal.

   13. PAPeter Attia1:09:02

       Mm.

   14. AGAndy Galpin1:09:03

       We just don't have enough to walk on that. Um, I don't think you would find a very highly competitive powerlifter who is under the illusion that this is great for their health. That's just not a, not a thing, really. Um, they sort of either ignore it or accept it. Having said that, um, I, I could name you a ton of people who feel fine, w- who... You know, world record holders, multiple world records or close. I can name you a ton of people who just lift kind of recreationally in the gym who are all beat to hell too.

   15. PAPeter Attia1:09:31

       Yeah.

   16. AGAndy Galpin1:09:32

       So, like, it's a little bit of a, "Well, okay, I could find examples on both sides here." Um, it depends on how they train.

   17. PAPeter Attia1:09:39

       And because we don't have randomization, we don't know if the people who are just doing great would be doing great no matter what they did, and the people who are all beat up to hell are gonna be beat up regardless of what they do.

   18. AGAndy Galpin1:09:53

       Yeah. And there's also a level of insanity, right? So you have the people like Louie Simmons, and you're like, "Well, okay, you, he, you trained with a broken back, a known broken bone in your back. Like, so, like, I don't even count you guys." Like, that, that's not the, the normal, you know, response, um, if you're trying to break world records, although those people are training hurt.

   19. PAPeter Attia1:10:12

       Yeah.

   20. AGAndy Galpin1:10:12

       Like, y- I, I could say the same thing about professional fighters, right? It's like, well, I mean, it's, it's a hurt sport. Like, it's... Yeah, but then I could tell you a bunch of them who are wrecked their whole life afterwards, and then a bunch that are, like, feel okay.

   21. PAPeter Attia1:10:28

       Yeah.

   22. AGAndy Galpin1:10:28

       So, uh, i- it's hard to say. Um, I'll put it this way. You take any sport, you take cycling, you take swimming, and you push it to the extremes like that, I mean, you're asking to not be able to use your shoulders the rest of your life. Like, the... It's, it's so it's not the sport per se-

   23. PAPeter Attia1:10:44

       Yeah

   24. AGAndy Galpin1:10:44

       ... it's the extremity of doing that I think is-

   25. PAPeter Attia1:10:46

       Yeah. I, I completely agree

   26. AGAndy Galpin1:10:47

       ... the problem issue.

   27. PAPeter Attia1:10:48

       Um, anything you wanna add to the training requirements of this athlete before we move on to weightlifters?

   28. AGAndy Galpin1:10:57

       I could, but just in the sake of time, let's-

   29. PAPeter Attia1:10:59

       I think we've covered, we've covered the big stuff.

10. 1:11:00 – 1:15:00

    Defining Olympic weightlifting: a test of power

    1. PAPeter Attia1:11:00

       Okay. Um, okay, remind people what Olympic weightlifting is. Again, the nomenclature [laughs] here gets very, uh, unhelpful.

    2. AGAndy Galpin1:11:08

       Yeah.

    3. PAPeter Attia1:11:08

       But why is it that these are probably among the most powerful athletes in the world?

    4. AGAndy Galpin1:11:15

       Sure. So this is now similar to powerlifting. Um, this is what most people think of when they think of powerlifting. And that's because they're gonna do two exercises. One of them is called the power clean. So I have great sympathy for you people who get all these confused. Um, the difference here is similarly to powerlifting, uh, Olympic weightlifting is a competition of who can lift the most amount of weight one time. That, that's it, right? There are two exercises. One's called the snatch, one's called the clean and jerk. The clean and jerk has two parts, so it has sort of two names, but it's one exercise in competition, right? Whoever lifts the most snatch, whoever lifts the most in the clean and jerk, you add those two up, and that's who gets our gold medal, all right? It's one rep, you know, your, your best score in one repetition, and it's the most amount of weight you can put on the bar. That's it. The difference is, though, why is this not powerlifting, why is this not truly a maximum strength test, is because both movements require you to take the bar from the ground and throw it over your head and catch it. And so in order... Because you're doing that, there is a speed requirement that has to happen. You simply can't throw a maximum weight over your head and catch it slowly. You can absolutely deadlift slowly. It doesn't really matter. You can bench slow, and you can squat slow. You know, you wanna go try, you wanna try to go fast, but it, it's not required in the thing. So if you look at, um, the sport of powerlifting, then in order to take a, a, especially a snatch, which is, um, apples to apples, the snatch is the single highest power-producing exercise that has ever been studied.

    5. PAPeter Attia1:12:43

       Hm.

    6. AGAndy Galpin1:12:44

       So nothing else produces more power per exercise than a snatch, and that's 'cause you have to take the bar from the ground and throw it over your head, uh, and try to catch it, right? You, you just can't do it slowly. Your feet get to leave the ground, so you don't have to worry about staying in contact, but the bar doesn't crash down on you. Like, if you were to do a speed squat and jump, and you jump in the air, the bar would smash you in the back of your neck and your head, and that hurts. Bench press, you can't accelerate through the end of the range of motion because the bar would leave you, so you actually decelerate towards the end of a bench. Anything where you're holding onto the implement, it's gonna slow down, right? Uh, things like throwing a medicine ball are great, and they are very powerful, but they're not as powerful as a snatch because the load gets so low. So let's remember, power is force times velocity. So a medicine ball throw has a high velocity, but it's a six or eight or maybe 20-pound ball. With a snatch, you might have 300 pounds on there. You might have 100 pounds. It's just a lot heavier, so the force component's higher, so the p- power output is significantly higher. And so it, it is the best way to produce force. So because of that, those athletes are, again, you know, quote-unquote, the most powerful, 'cause they're doing the most powerful movements. So if you were to look at, like, the vertical jump height on these individuals, uh, it's just, it's, it's absurd how high they can jump while still being exceptionally strong. So you're still talking about people who aren't squatting 1,000 pounds, um, but at the same h- same weight, they might be squatting 700 or 800 or 900 pounds. And also, they're doing it at, uh, at a speed that's not as high as... Say, they're not jumping as high as, like, a basketball player, but they're doing it with, with six, 600 pounds. You know, 400 pounds, 500 pounds. So that's why it is, it is, quote-unquote, more powerful. So you could find higher jumpers, you could find higher squatters, but they have this wonderful combination of really strong and really fast, and that's why they produce so much power.

    7. PAPeter Attia1:14:42

       Now, going back to what we said earlier, they have to be strong, and so-

    8. AGAndy Galpin1:14:46

       Yep

    9. PAPeter Attia1:14:46

       ... presumably they still have to follow the exact same principles we just talked about for strength.

    10. AGAndy Galpin1:14:51

        Mm-hmm.

    11. PAPeter Attia1:14:51

        They're not going to optimize their strength doing 12 reps. They're gonna have to be in sub-five.

    12. AGAndy Galpin1:14:57

        Mm-hmm.

    13. PAPeter Attia1:14:57

        Um, I guess here my question

11. 1:15:00 – 1:25:48

    Training principles of Olympic weightlifting

    1. PAPeter Attia1:15:00

       is, same thing, right? We've got the same, you know, avatar as you describe it, the, the, you know, middle-aged woman now, let's just say, who was an athlete in college and, you know, but, you know, wants to try a new sport. This is the sport she wants to do. She's trained, you know, she's not, you know, she's not a stranger to exercise, but she's never done weightlifting, uh, meaning Olympic weightlifting. She's never done these two movements. Um, I'm assuming that you're doing a lot of the movement learning with very light load, right? You're doing a broomstick-

    2. AGAndy Galpin1:15:32

       Mm-hmm

    3. PAPeter Attia1:15:32

       ... perhaps the first time you do a clean and jerk or a snatch.

    4. AGAndy Galpin1:15:35

       Totally. Totally.

    5. PAPeter Attia1:15:36

       How is she training her strength in those movements?

    6. AGAndy Galpin1:15:41

       Right. So when you talk about Olympic weightlifting or weightlifting, this is, of all the ta- things we're gonna talk about, this is by far the most technical component. And so we have to... I'm gonna almost kind of leave that part of the conversation because it's, we're just gonna get bogged down there.

    7. PAPeter Attia1:15:57

       Okay.

    8. AGAndy Galpin1:15:57

       But, but we do acknowledge it, right? It is a ton of technical work to get there. Because your point is right. If you are simply snatching a PVC pipe, uh, you're not gonna generate any strength. That's pretty easy to understand. You're not even gonna produce any power, really, 'cause the load is way too light. It's super fast. It's just, it, it, it's honestly hard. You can't actually throw a PVC pipe over your head very fast. It's very awkward.

    9. PAPeter Attia1:16:18

       Yeah.

    10. AGAndy Galpin1:16:18

        Trust me. You can't j- jerk it over your head. Like, it's super awkward. So once the technical component is sort of acquired, what we, what you would have to do, to answer your question, is build the technical skills and then get strength doing, say, a front squat, and doing a push press, or an overhead press and stuff like that, a d- more traditional movement while you're building the technical ability. Because what's gonna happen is you won't have the technical ability to even get heavy enough on the snatch and clean and jerk for quite some time, 'cause you're gonna be so limited by technique rather than strength or speed, and so that's gonna hold you back for a long time. And this is why a lot of folks will, frankly, not use these movements, which I think is a mistake. I think it's a ma- major mistake. But if you were the classic kind of personal trainer and, you know, you got a client coming in once a week, geez, like are you really gonna invest three months into teaching them how to snatch before they actually burn any calories, gain any muscle, or get stronger? Well, it's probably a losing endeavor.

    11. PAPeter Attia1:17:15

        Yeah.

    12. AGAndy Galpin1:17:15

        But if you have somebody for a year, more importantly, have somebody who says, "I'm committed to doing this, and I'm, I'm gonna invest, okay, you know, five years, 10 years," this type of stuff, then it's probably a worthwhile endeavor, um, there, because it is total body. It's a deadlift mixed with a vertical jump, mixed with an overhead press and a catch, mixed with an overhead squat. You're moving, you're jumping up and then down, and then you're catching yourself, so balance and proprioception are also there. Um, it's a, your lats are gonna go to keep your position in the back. Uh, the core has to be there to overhead squat it. It's very, very well-rounded. With the exception of horizontal pressing, it covers just about everything else. And so it's a very economical movement.

    13. PAPeter Attia1:17:58

        A- and also it's, it's, it's peak concentric and eccentric, because the amount of deceleration you have to do in that movement is insane, whereas, for example, in powerlifting, you don't really te- get to test the eccentric phase to the same extent.

    14. AGAndy Galpin1:18:15

        Yep. There's no landing, there's no absorption, um, and there's no movement in space, right? Which is very important for neural control, brain, uh, keeping your brain healthy and everything like that, catching yourself in a fall. Um, so yeah, super productive.

    15. PAPeter Attia1:18:28

        My brother at one point became obsessed with setting his, you know, school record, um, when he was in law school. He played, he played, he still, man, he had a e- year of eligibility left, so he played football for another year. And, um, for some reason, one of the tests that they were putting the team through was, like, you know, uh, a clean and jerk, and he won. I forget how much he moved. It was a lot for, for, he was about 185 pounds, and it was about twice his body weight or close to it.

    16. AGAndy Galpin1:18:55

        Mm-hmm.

    17. PAPeter Attia1:18:55

        But here's what was interesting, and it, it, what you said is what reminded me of this. All he did was the following to train. He would put 135 on the bar as the max amount and do that as perfectly and quickly as possible. So, you know, he would be filming himself, making sure elbow, you know, bar travel was perfectly straight, and then do insanely heavy front squats and shrugs and all sorts of other accessory movements. And then on the day-

    18. AGAndy Galpin1:19:23

        Yeah

    19. PAPeter Attia1:19:23

        ... of the competition, he just went up. They've got three and a half plates on the bar, and he just did it that one time, and that was it. But he never-

    20. AGAndy Galpin1:19:30

        Yeah

    21. PAPeter Attia1:19:30

        ... had trained above 135. I was amazed by that, but it sounds like that's not an unreasonable strategy here.

    22. AGAndy Galpin1:19:36

        That wouldn't be my strategy.

    23. PAPeter Attia1:19:38

        Okay.

    24. AGAndy Galpin1:19:38

        It wouldn't at all. [sniffs] Um, but in his particular case-

    25. PAPeter Attia1:19:40

        Meaning you would've pushed more in training higher and higher weight.

    26. AGAndy Galpin1:19:42

        Oh, yeah.

    27. PAPeter Attia1:19:43

        Okay.

    28. AGAndy Galpin1:19:44

        Y- yeah, yeah. So-

    29. PAPeter Attia1:19:46

        But he got kind of lucky-

    30. AGAndy Galpin1:19:46

        The reason probably-
12. 1:25:48 – 1:31:38

    Tracking power output when training

    1. PAPeter Attia1:25:48

       You know, k- last year I swapped out my leg press machine for one of the Keiser ones. Um-

    2. AGAndy Galpin1:25:53

       Mm.

    3. PAPeter Attia1:25:54

       So it's the, you know, pneumatic device, and I love it because it's, it's giving me power by rep. And-

    4. AGAndy Galpin1:26:00

       Mm-hmm

    5. PAPeter Attia1:26:00

       ... it's so funny, now I, I haven't been able to figure out the exact formula for max power, but that's generally what I'm trying to hit, right? I usually use power-

    6. AGAndy Galpin1:26:07

       Mm-hmm

    7. PAPeter Attia1:26:07

       ... as the metric I'm training to, and then I look at the falloff and fatigue. Um, so now I'm gonna pay more attention to that, which is am I truly hitting peak power at... Am I 50% of one RM, and that kind of stuff. So that's, that's, that's so cool. I can't wait to-

    8. AGAndy Galpin1:26:23

       If you're pretty trained, I'd bet you're probably... You might even be closer to 60%. And is it, like, the, uh, front squat machine? The Keiser front squat machine?

    9. PAPeter Attia1:26:30

       No, it's the seated leg press machine. Um, it's like... Yeah, yeah, seated leg press. Yeah.

    10. AGAndy Galpin1:26:34

        Oh, seated leg press. Yeah, yeah. Mm, y- yeah, you might even be higher.

    11. PAPeter Attia1:26:39

        Okay.

    12. AGAndy Galpin1:26:39

        Like, y- you'd probably be somewhere-

    13. PAPeter Attia1:26:40

        Okay

    14. AGAndy Galpin1:26:40

        ... in that range.

    15. PAPeter Attia1:26:40

        Yeah.

    16. AGAndy Galpin1:26:41

        Kind of just depends.

    17. PAPeter Attia1:26:41

        I'll, I'll, I'll look for that. That's cool. Um-

    18. AGAndy Galpin1:26:44

        You know, I'll give you... Since we're here, uh, 20-plus years ago, uh, I was at a facility training professional athletes, and we had some of those machines. And I went probably, personally, I don't know, six, maybe eight weeks straight of jus- just using that Keiser machine, and all I did for training was try to hit the highest watt-

    19. PAPeter Attia1:27:02

        Yeah

    20. AGAndy Galpin1:27:02

        ... output I could do. Didn't care how many reps it took, didn't care how many sets. I would take a break, I would rest, I'd try it again, and I would go until I got a higher number, come back the next week, and I went up for eight weeks, choo, choo, choo, choo, choo, just by trying to optimize, uh, power output. The thing you talked about earlier, the velocity transducer, there's another way of training here for strength or for power, that is velocity-based training, which is almost exactly like what we're talking about, which is instead of worrying about the weight or the rep ranges, we're simply trying to hit the largest power output possible. We're gonna do as many reps as we can there with breaks, and that's how we're gonna maximize power output, and it's, it's a very, very effective method. Um, rather than just putting an arbitrary number of reps down, it's... You're gonna go peak power output.

    21. PAPeter Attia1:27:48

        Well, well, that's, that's sort of how I use the device now, right? Which is, I say, for, for this load, I should be this many meters per second.

    22. AGAndy Galpin1:27:56

        Yep.

    23. PAPeter Attia1:27:56

        And when I can't do that twice consecutively, it's, the set's over, and sometimes that means the set ends at five, and sometimes that means the set ends at eight. But, uh, d- do you agree that, like... And I don't know, this sort of stems from my belief, which might be totally unfounded, that I'm, quote-unquote, sort of wasting reps if... I'd be better off resting and coming back and doing it again faster and harder in three minutes than eking out more slow reps. Is, is there any validity to that?

    24. AGAndy Galpin1:28:25

        Oh, it's not unfounded at all.

    25. PAPeter Attia1:28:26

        Okay.

    26. AGAndy Galpin1:28:26

        There's, there's strong science on that. There, there's a, um... Brian Mann at the University of Miami has done a ton of great stuff on velocity-based training. You can check out a lot of his work. But there's a, there's a training concept called cluster sets, and so clusters have been shown, uh, to be highly effective for strength, power, and even hypertrophy, surprising enough. But, uh, what a cluster is is this. Let's say you were gonna do six repetitions in your set. Oh, f- let's say five, just to keep it consistent. Five reps. You could do, you know, one, two, three, four, five, no breaks in between, or a cluster set says you're gonna do one rep, you're gonna take a five- to 20-second rest, you'll do the next rep-

    27. PAPeter Attia1:29:04

        Mm

    28. AGAndy Galpin1:29:04

        ... five to 20, five to 20, five to 20. So you're still doing, quote-unquote, five, but you might-

    29. PAPeter Attia1:29:09

        But you have micro breaks

    30. AGAndy Galpin1:29:10

        ... if you only took... Micro breaks. That's what clusters are, and they are extremely effective because they do exactly what you just mentioned. The quality, and when I... By, by quality here, I mean power output, velocity output, et cetera, it goes up because you, you reduce fatigue in specifically reps three, four, and five. Those will be much higher quality. So the old way we would say it is instead of getting five reps, you get five first reps-
13. 1:31:38 – 1:34:49

    Frequency of training for Olympic weightlifting

    1. PAPeter Attia1:31:38

       so what, um... How, how often do you want this woman in the gym?

    2. AGAndy Galpin1:31:43

       So here's the fun part. Oh, this is really good. Because v- um, the total load is low, you can, you can do this every day. Right? You're talking about a small number of reps, not to fatigue, not at all to fatigue. You're talking about a light weight. You could go every day. There- there's no reason why you couldn't go do some power training b- I mean, pick any power sport. Uh, basketball.

    3. PAPeter Attia1:32:09

       Yeah, I was just about to say, this is no different than saying, "I'm gonna go play basketball every day."

    4. AGAndy Galpin1:32:12

       No different. In fact, it's, it's better because there's even less fatigue than you... Because there's a lot of fatigue in a basketball game. Um, so as long as you keep these high-quality. Now, if you are doing these to fatigue, sets of 20, you know, five seconds rest in between, then it, like, then that's a whole different thing. But if you're doing these non-fatiguing, which is what you need to have for power and skill. So this is a very important point. For power and skill development, they need to be non-fatiguing. If, if you're, if you're getting to fatigue, you're not doing either one of those things. Now, you can get to fatigue if you're trying to produce a different adaptation, which is maintenance of power through fatigue, which is fine, but that's not the same thing. You're not going to improve your peak power by fatigue. Doesn't happen. So these sessions are kind of like, quote-unquote, boring. You're not gonna get a big sweat. You're not gonna get a big pump. You're not gonna have a, like a, you're not gonna throw up on the floor afterwards. It's sort of like, okay. Like... Then you go home. Like, damn. And this is honestly why they're generally not very popular. Um, like I got powerful, but I don't look any different. I didn't lose any weight. I'm not covering... I don't have any of these other feedback mechanisms that says, suggests I got a good workout in.

    5. PAPeter Attia1:33:19

       Mm-hmm.

    6. AGAndy Galpin1:33:19

       Despite the fact it is very high-quality, uh, training. You're just not gonna get that feedback. So in power training, power development stuff, very, very low fatigue. That's the goal.

    7. PAPeter Attia1:33:30

       Um, which type of athletes that are not weightlifters do you have doing these exercises?

    8. AGAndy Galpin1:33:40

       Oh, basically everyone. I mean, uh, it's, it's hard to pick a sport where power development is not important. Um, caveats here. Uh, if you're, you're heavyweight champion of Bellator, [laughs] like you're heavy, you know, you're a professional UFC fighter, am I throwing maximum weight over your head and catching it all the time? I, I wouldn't hesitate to do it, but a lot of times they just simply have-

    9. PAPeter Attia1:34:04

       Yeah

    10. AGAndy Galpin1:34:04

        ... trauma. Not gonna happen. Um, I don't hesitate to do it with professional baseball players. Don't hesitate to do it with pitchers. Though many of them don't have shoulder, um... So th- without getting too technical, your shoulder needs to slide and move in a very specific way, um, especially when you're pitching.

    11. PAPeter Attia1:34:20

        Yeah.

    12. AGAndy Galpin1:34:20

        And if they don't have that, then we would walk away from this, or if they don't want to, it, it's fine. You can get away from it. Um, but other than that, uh, football player, wrestlers, um, skiers, tennis players. Same thing, if you're a shoulder athlete and you have any number of reasons you don't want to, great, we can walk away from it. But there's really... Uh, anyone else can, can really go after these things. Um, if it's all done appropriately, then, uh, it's a fantastic exercise, or set of exercises rather.

14. 1:34:49 – 1:43:28

    How post-activation potentiation (and the opposite) can improve power training and speed training

    1. PAPeter Attia1:34:49

       I want to talk about something that ties into both weightlifting and powerlifting that I used to do, and I, I don't remember if it was just bro science, but empirically it seemed to be true. I used to have this set that I really enjoyed doing. So it was, um, a heavy deadlift. So it was either a two, three or four rep deadlift, and it was super setted with, um, I'm trying to think. Would I do it as a jump plyo or a drop?

    2. AGAndy Galpin1:35:18

       Oh.

    3. PAPeter Attia1:35:19

       But basically-

    4. AGAndy Galpin1:35:19

       Oh

    5. PAPeter Attia1:35:19

       ... it was a plyometric in between.

    6. AGAndy Galpin1:35:21

       Yep.

    7. PAPeter Attia1:35:21

       And the empirical observation was it ma- both helped each other. So it doesn't sound like that should be the case. It doesn't sound like my rest between deadlifts are plyometrics, but yet it did seem to make me stronger. Now, maybe that was psychological, but there was a-

    8. AGAndy Galpin1:35:41

       No

    9. PAPeter Attia1:35:41

       ... sort of bro science belief I had that that was doing something to the muscle fiber to get it ready to lift heavy. Is there some... It sounds like there might be some validity here.

    10. AGAndy Galpin1:35:50

        Oh, yeah. No, there's a lot of science here. So what you're referring to is a phenomenon we call post-activation-

    11. PAPeter Attia1:35:54

        That's right

    12. AGAndy Galpin1:35:55

        ... potentiation.

    13. PAPeter Attia1:35:55

        Post-activation potentiation. Yep, okay. Yep.

    14. AGAndy Galpin1:35:57

        Cool. Been around for a long time. Very classic Ellwood Henneman size principle.

    15. PAPeter Attia1:36:01

        Okay.

    16. AGAndy Galpin1:36:02

        Okay? So 1950s, uh, '54, '56, '58, sort of a series of papers back then. Uh, but basically the way that, uh... Remember ear- ear- earlier in the conversation we talked about fast twitch and slow twitch fibers? All right. Well, there are things called motor units. So when a nerve comes down and goes into a muscle, it has a whole bunch of muscle fibers in that. So the nerve and all the fibers collected together is called a motor unit. Uh, all of the fibers in that motor unit are the same fiber type. So all the fast twitch ones, all the slow twitch ones, whatever, and these are spread throughout the muscle. So what happens is when you do low velocity exercise, or low velocity movement, like right now, like I'm doing all these things, I'm using low threshold motor units, and these tend to be slow twitch ones. So it makes sense if I go to scratch my eyeball, I don't want to be producing max force and-

    17. PAPeter Attia1:36:50

        [laughs]

    18. AGAndy Galpin1:36:50

        ... stick. Not a good strategy, right? In fact, the best strategy is you start with the lowest force output humanly possible, and then you work your way up, and that's because this principle, another one called all or none, which means when a muscle fiber contracts, it contracts with 100% effort. You can't regulate it up and down. There's no dimmer switch. It goes on, off, on, off. So the only way you regulate force production is to increase or decrease the total amount of motor units that are activated. Because when you activate a motor unit, all the fibers get activated and all of them get activated at 100% contraction, right? So what happens is I go to scratch my eyeball and I activate the muscle fi- the motor units that are the smallest and weakest. It's not necessarily like that, but-

    19. PAPeter Attia1:37:35

        Yep

    20. AGAndy Galpin1:37:35

        ... it's proof of concept here. Okay? And now I realize, oh, I'm not scratching my eyeball this time. Now I'm actually picking up a medicine ball. Okay, I'll activate those same initial motor units, and now I'll activate some other ones and some more ones. And then I realize I'm not picking up a medicine ball, I'm picking up a car off the ground. Now I'll activate more, and more, and more, and more of these higher threshold motor units, and those tend to be the more the fast-twitch fibers. All right. So in the case of post-active interpretat- post-activation potentiation, what's happening is you're doing that deadlift, I think you said deadlift and then a-

    21. PAPeter Attia1:38:06

        Deadlift and a plyo

    22. AGAndy Galpin1:38:07

        ... uh, plyo jump

    23. PAPeter Attia1:38:08

        Yeah. It's a box jump. Yeah.

    24. AGAndy Galpin1:38:10

        You do that deadlift, and because of the size principle and you're, and you're requiring force production, you are activating higher threshold motor units. Then when you put the barbell down and you go to do your jump, those are still engaged and activated. So now you can actually jump with more force and velocity because you've, you've sort of turned them on, initially you've activated them.

    25. PAPeter Attia1:38:31

        Mm-hmm.

    26. AGAndy Galpin1:38:31

        And so it's 100%, and there's a lot of science. My, um... Lee Brown, whose lab I sort of run now, brought me over to Cal State Fullerton, has, has done legendary... He's a Lifetime Achievement Award winner. Um, legendary work in this area. You can al- it also goes the other way. So this is fun. When it comes to power training or speed training, people tend to think about things like resistance. So in other words, um, if you've ever done sprinting and you've, like, drug a sled-

    27. PAPeter Attia1:38:57

        Mm-hmm

    28. AGAndy Galpin1:38:57

        ... or had a parachute on, great. You've done vertical jump training and you've had, like, the bands that hold you down. This is all added resistance, and that's fine for teaching you acceleration, which is moving over inertia quickly. However, the other side of the equation is if you wanna get fast, and we're sort of... I'm, I'm sort of jumping the gun here-

    29. PAPeter Attia1:39:16

        Yeah

    30. AGAndy Galpin1:39:16

        ... we're kind of moving into our speed one, but it's, it's fun, right? You actually want to also practice moving faster than you can currently move.
15. 1:43:28 – 1:48:48

    The Strongman competition: more breadth of movement, strength, and stamina

    1. PAPeter Attia1:43:28

       let's move on to Strongman. Um, again, I, I think we can... We don't have to focus specifically on, like, an actual Strongman competition, but maybe focus on, like, feats of strength that also tend to require a lot of stamina, right? So I don't know. Would the classic Strongman activity be like an enormous sled pull or something like that? You know, pulling a truck, uh, picking up a barrel and throwing it, and walking over and picking it up again and throwing it. I mean, y- you have... I don't know. There's, there's a lot I can think of. My favorite was tire flipping. I used to There was a 450-pound tire at the gym I used to belong to, and h- whatever, how long it would take you to do 25 flips was a metric of your-

    2. AGAndy Galpin1:44:09

       Amazing

    3. PAPeter Attia1:44:09

       ... insanity, yeah.

    4. AGAndy Galpin1:44:11

       I love... Yeah, farmer's carries. There's tons of-

    5. PAPeter Attia1:44:14

       Yeah

    6. AGAndy Galpin1:44:14

       ... uh, rope pulls, all kinds of good stuff, yeah.

    7. PAPeter Attia1:44:17

       So now we're starting to get from highly, highly specific, where powerlifter, you've got three things, weightlifter, you've got two things. Now we're really getting into more breadth.

    8. AGAndy Galpin1:44:28

       Mm-hmm.

    9. PAPeter Attia1:44:29

       There's almost no limit to what a, quote-unquote, strongman, strong woman can do. And maybe one would argue this is more functional, this is more versatile, th- this is more engaging. You're al- also probably now sh- now starting to expand the interest of the gen pop into what we're talking about. So you at the outset said the three things that mattered most were specificity, specificity, and specificity. When you're dealing with something that has so many components, how do you wrap your mind around specificity versus generality?

    10. AGAndy Galpin1:45:04

        Yeah, so this is why Strongman is great. It, it's, um... I mean, probably like, like you a little bit, one of the reasons I got in this field is because of the Strongman being played on ESPN at 3:00 in the morning-

    11. PAPeter Attia1:45:15

        [laughs]

    12. AGAndy Galpin1:45:16

        ... you know, in the, in the 1990s. Like, thank you, Bill Kazmaier. Like, this is a whole generation of us who are like, "What is this stuff? This is incredible," right? Um, so there still is some specificity, like when you get to those competitions, 'cause you kind of know what-

    13. PAPeter Attia1:45:30

        Yeah

    14. AGAndy Galpin1:45:30

        ... what you're gonna do. But yeah, this is why they're dope, right? Like, someone who's optimized for grip strength, uh, who can, you know, hold the Atlas Stones or something is, is not gonna be the person who's optimized for the deadlift carry or, or the, or the, the deadlift competition or the, the overhead press or whatever, right? Like, you'll see people who win three straight competit- or three straight events, and they'll get dead last in another one. CrossFit has a very similar feel here, right? So we're gonna test you a bunch of different planes here, and if you're great at deadlifting, you're probably gonna be poor at pressing. That's just sort of how it goes with the inverse, right? So, um, in this particular case, you have s- real strongmen who are, in fact, based on the definitions we said earlier, not technically, quote-unquote, "the strongest in the world," because the w- the way you win in Strongman or woman is how many reps typically can you do at a very heavy load, which is still a, it's a global feat of strength, but it's not to the same level of high precision. So if you were to then technically take everyone from a Strongwoman competition in the same weight class as everyone from the, the same equivalent level of powerlifting competition, they'd... The squat would probably be higher on aggregate in the powerlifting competition. However, if you said, "Let's put on 95% of your one-rep max and see how many reps you could do," the strong woman would absolutely smash, again, on aggregate. I mean, you could pick one individual person or something, but as an average. And so what we're doing here is saying, "We're gonna take extremely heavy loads, and we're gonna ask you to do it to fatigue. Um, but we're probably gonna do a little bit safer than we would typically do." So you don't generally see, like, a bench press to fatigue, uh, on a Strongman. You don't see a deadlift to fatigue often. You're gonna see something like, uh, a car lift, and the reason they do that is because you can actually load the bar a lot higher in the air, and so it ends up being almost closer to, like, an RDL. Um, so you take that knee cross out of it, and it allows you to do a lot more reps. It's still brutal, still, like, insane, but that's, that's why they do some funky stuff like that. A farmer's carry, you can do that as heavy as possible and drop it when you're done. So they, they, they, they kind of hedge in that direction. Um, same thing, you, why you would never see a snatch or a clean jerk. Uh, and like it's just way, way, way too risky, right? It's gonna be a, a log press overhead, right? Awkward and weird, but you get there.

    15. PAPeter Attia1:47:42

        And that's why, like, even the tire flip, like, I remember people would say, like, "Come on, how can you flip a tire that's 450 pounds?" And it's like, well, remember, you're never fully lifting a 450-pound thing off the ground. Like, when the-

    16. AGAndy Galpin1:47:53

        No

    17. PAPeter Attia1:47:53

        ... the first movement of the deadlift, it might be 250 pounds that you're lifting up, and then by the time you're pushing it, you've got the momentum helping you. So yes, it's infinitely safer, and you're-

    18. AGAndy Galpin1:48:04

        Yeah

    19. PAPeter Attia1:48:05

        ... ultimately, you're, you're fatiguing... I, at least for me, my cardiorespiratory and muscular fatigue hit almost at the same time.

    20. AGAndy Galpin1:48:14

        100%. Yeah, you're gonna, you're gonna feel blown up. Your forearms will be gone. You, uh... In fact, you know what's actually really cool is maybe five or six years ago, they started putting heart rate monitors on people in these competitions, and then they, they'll broadcast them.

    21. PAPeter Attia1:48:26

        Yeah, yeah.

    22. AGAndy Galpin1:48:26

        And they are just, they're just pegged the whole time.

    23. PAPeter Attia1:48:28

        No, no, it's insane.

    24. AGAndy Galpin1:48:28

        They're like 180-

    25. PAPeter Attia1:48:29

        Yeah, yeah

    26. AGAndy Galpin1:48:29

        ... the entire time.

    27. PAPeter Attia1:48:31

        It's, it's, it's-

    28. AGAndy Galpin1:48:31

        Max heart rate. It's lovely.

    29. PAPeter Attia1:48:32

        It truly is, yeah.

    30. AGAndy Galpin1:48:33

        Um, which is actually one of the, another reason why one could argue i- if you wanted to look at something that is generally better for global health, it's a pretty good endeavor here. [laughs] You're gonna get a lot. It is human movement. It is

16. 1:48:48 – 2:05:20

    Training principles of Strongmen and advice for someone new to the Strongman competition

    1. AGAndy Galpin1:48:48

       varied. It requires stabilization and all kinds of random movements, but it is super heavy and to, to, to high levels of fatigue. Um, so yeah, it's, it's a great movement.

    2. PAPeter Attia1:48:58

       So now let's talk about this one again through the training of a person who is new to this. So guy comes to you, and he's never powerlifted. He's never weightlifted. He's never done a Strongman. He's... You know, he goes to the gym to, you know, do a little bit of cardio and do a little bit of strength training, but there's never been specificity to the training. Um, he doesn't have any injuries that we need to worry about. Let's just put that in there at the moment. Um, so there's nothing that's truly off limits, but he has no technique. He's not coming in on a foundation of he knows what it's like to deadlift at least twice his body weight or something like that. He j- he-

    3. AGAndy Galpin1:49:42

       Uh-huh

    4. PAPeter Attia1:49:42

       ... just, I mean, he doesn't have that. But he says, "You know, Andy, I'm interested in this both because I think it would be a fun competition to do, um, but also I think it, it's more in line with my long-term health goals. So I don't wanna get injured. I definitely do not wanna get injured doing this, and I wanna be able to do it for quite some time."

    5. AGAndy Galpin1:50:02

       Yep. Cool. So what you wanna do is build a week, a frequency, and, uh, what exercises you do throughout the week so that you are not, um, doing too many things too often in the same movement pattern. So for example, if you're gonna work on your farmer's carries, that's great, uh, today, but you then probably wouldn't wanna work on a movement like a deadlift maybe the next day because you're gonna be fatigued with your grip.

    6. PAPeter Attia1:50:26

       Mm-hmm.

    7. AGAndy Galpin1:50:27

       Okay, great. So then maybe you pick a non-fatigue, maybe that's yoke walk or something like that the next day, load it up there. So you just wanna kind of be a little conscious of that. Uh, how many days in a row are you hinging? How many days in a row are you holding or pressing directly overhead? And just kind of move, um, the, or vary the movement patterns is the first step, I'd say. Um, repetition range, I would probably stick in the, like, five to eight window initially for this person, because you can get enough little fatigue, but you can also bail pretty easy. It's heavy and you're practicing. And this is the big distinction. You wanna practice perfect repetition. And so what I mean by that is instead of going to, like, an RER or, um, RPE, I'm gonna go to technical failure.

    8. PAPeter Attia1:51:12

       Yeah.

    9. AGAndy Galpin1:51:14

       So we're gonna do a goblet squat and we're gonna do 100-pound sandbag, uh, or 150-pound medicine ball, um, in front of you, and we're gonna do front squats, and we're gonna do... The goal here is to do eight or so. But as soon as I see you break technical, you're done. And that's gonna get that person a lot of fatigue, a lot of strength, but also keeping them very, very safe, and they're gonna learn to feel, "I don't get to win anymore when I break technique." So they're just gonna continue to learn hold technique, hold technique, hold position. And I would do the same for their overhead pressing, all that stuff, right? We start to get into bad positions in our low back, all right, we're done. And so getting them to technical failure, is the phrase that you would use here, is the way I would go about it. Um, and you can actually do these more frequently than the average, same exact avatar could in powerlifting because the, the, the movements are more varied. See, the recovery is probably gonna be a little bit higher rather than getting the same exact locked-in position and just sort of moving, uh, in one plane. Um, you're gonna get sore, but, but there's also not as much of a, um, typically, like, eccentric landing demand like there is in weightlifting. Um, there's eccentric, but it's typically controlled, um, or it's intentionally uncontrolled-

    10. PAPeter Attia1:52:25

        Mm-hmm

    11. AGAndy Galpin1:52:25

        ... right, in cases where-

    12. PAPeter Attia1:52:26

        Dropping or something

    13. AGAndy Galpin1:52:27

        ... and it's... Right. And, and so you can get away with more volume 'cause your recovery's gonna be a little bit better, uh, little bit higher there.

    14. PAPeter Attia1:52:33

        Tell me, going back to our weightlifter and powerlifter, why would we not also, or maybe we do and we just didn't state it explicitly, why would we not also force technical failure into the mix? Is there ever a time when, you know, we just, we would wanna, we would tolerate a break in form where we see, you know, more lumbar kyphosis or lordosis-

    15. AGAndy Galpin1:52:56

        Mm-hmm

    16. PAPeter Attia1:52:56

        ... than we think is actually healthy, but we, we wanna learn how to grit through that? 'Cause sometimes a single rep max sucks no matter what.

    17. AGAndy Galpin1:53:05

        Yeah. So with the case of Olympic weightlifting, it almost takes care of it for you. So if you have a break in position, you're probably gonna miss a lift, so it's self-limiting that way a little bit, right? Um, especially when you get past a certain load. Like, you could do 30% of your one-rep max with very poor technique, but as you start getting up higher and higher, it becomes, um, again, a little bit more self-limiting. You definitely wanna make sure you're, you're holding position in all of them. Um, but the technical demands of something like a bench press are fairly low. There's only a couple of joints that really need to be taken care of, and as long as they're okay, you're there. When you get into something like, um, a snatch, every joint has to be in the right spot or you're, you're kind of out of, you know, things can go wonky. Um, a deadlift is the same thing. Like, a deadlift is not as complicated. A squat is fairly complicated though. Um, so, but there's also variations you're gonna do probably. You're gonna do, um, some sort of box squat or chair squat. You're gonna limit the range of motion. And so the last thing I wanna say about that is since the goal of powerlifting is to achieve a one-rep max, you're actually not trying to achieve optimal range of motion. In fact, you go the opposite. So physics-wise, work is force multiplied by distance. So if you're trying to maximize force, you minimize distance 'cause you minimize the amount of work you have to do. And so they are intentionally limiting range of motion. So they're actually doing this, like, pseudo-technique which is not to maximize actual human strength. It's to maximize the score on the barbell, which is not necessarily the same thing. And so you're, you're probably gonna be working so hard on that technique that it almost keeps you out of the squirrely areas because you're trying to just, instead of getting this, like, big long range of motion things, like, you're just trying to-

    18. PAPeter Attia1:54:46

        Yeah

    19. AGAndy Galpin1:54:46

        ... get through the stuff. You're gonna go all the way down to touch, but you're gonna set yourself up in a position that minimizes range of motion, which is actually putting your joints in the right spot. So it's, it's a little bit there taken care of.

    20. PAPeter Attia1:54:56

        What percentage of powerlifters, uh, deadlift with a traditional narrow grip versus a sumo?

    21. AGAndy Galpin1:55:03

        I don't know an actual number there. Um, I would say, I don't know. Uh, um-

    22. PAPeter Attia1:55:10

        Is that simply a, a, a leg length to arm length difference? Like, for me, sumo is so much more comfortable than narrow.

    23. AGAndy Galpin1:55:18

        Yeah. Well, generally it's going to be, right?

    24. PAPeter Attia1:55:21

        Yeah.

    25. AGAndy Galpin1:55:21

        Um, it, it just gets easier on the low back. But it also depends, it depends on three factors. It depends on your shank to femur ratio, it depends on your femur to upper back basically, and then it depends on your arm. So all three of those things get wonky. And then it depends really on your hip versus back strength. So strong hips do well with sumo. Weak hips are gonna get smashed with sumo. Um, so yeah, the, a lot of ways you can go about it.

    26. PAPeter Attia1:55:47

        Interesting. Okay.

    27. AGAndy Galpin1:55:48

        There, there's a whole argument we could have here, but we'll probably skip it.

    28. PAPeter Attia1:55:50

        [laughs] We'll save that for the next one. Um, okay, so, um, our, our strongman is training very frequently. It's highly varied. We're in more-

    29. AGAndy Galpin1:56:03

        Mm-hmm

    30. PAPeter Attia1:56:05

        And we're training to technical failure, meaning we're not pushing low-quality reps. When we break technique-
17. 2:05:20 – 2:15:20

    CrossFit: a combination of weightlifting movements, endurance, and circuit training

    1. PAPeter Attia2:05:20

       Okay, let's talk about CrossFit. Obviously, there's a pretty decent overlap between CrossFit and Strongman in that CrossFit is, there are, there are events that take a really long time. Uh, you know, a set, there are certain sets that can take 20 minutes that are metabolically as demanding as what most people could barely do in an hour. Um, so te- tell folks a little bit about how CrossFit works. Um, and, and, and I guess, I don't know if we distinguish between CrossFit with a capital C and CrossFit with a little C, 'cause there's a lot of CrossFit-like stuff that isn't maybe branded CrossFit.

    2. AGAndy Galpin2:05:54

       Sure.

    3. PAPeter Attia2:05:54

       But I think for our purposes, let's just make it all the same.

    4. AGAndy Galpin2:05:57

       Yeah. We- we'll call it, and I don't mean this as any pejorative, but we'll just call it, like, competitive circuit training, and just anything like that-

    5. PAPeter Attia2:06:04

       Yeah

    6. AGAndy Galpin2:06:05

       ... i- is this sort of thing. Um, this is one, I actually think, that's really cool about sports, is we get to invent new ones all the time, and we get to, like, continue to test human capability in a lot of ways. It's really, really fun. Um, so CrossFit is scored a little bit differently. Um, it is, it's a nice combination. There are some weightlifting movements, so you might see one of the competitions being a one-rep max snatch. That's it. Whole thing, right? Um, you might see it as, like, an endurance event, so you might have to run a marathon or cycle a marathon or, or something like that, right? And then you might see some of these more of, um, you know, circuit training type of, you know, s- 20 kettlebell swings plus three snatches plus a vertical jump and 20 pull-ups, and as many rounds of that you can do in 10 minutes. So, like, you know, some things like that. So the idea is you try to combine a bunch of these things, and every event gets scored, just like Strongman, and at the end of the three or days or whatever it is, whoever has the highest amount of points, just like Strongman. So similar to Strongman like that. It's not one event, it's menti- it's many. It's not one single structured exercise. It's a lot. It's typically a combination of exercises in the same exact one. Um, similar to weightlifting, in tech, they'll use barbell movements. It's typically big, complex movements, um, and all that. Um, and it's similar to, uh, um, to cross- or to, uh, um, to s- to, to powerlifting in terms of, like, hey, sometimes max strength matters. So it's a little bit of, like, a combination of all these things. So, um, one thing that they do, though, if we compare this to Strongman, is the absolute loads are lower. And so when you see a Strongman, it's probably gonna be doing something where the winner of the competition might win with, like, 5 to 15 reps. Like, not always, but something like that, right? So if it's a log press, you know, you're, you're probably not doing 100 reps in a log press and winning. You know, some people might even g- not even be able to press the log once or twice, and the winner typically has five or six or 10 or 12 reps, like, you know, roughly here. CrossFit competition, the volume tends to be way higher. It, it is hundreds of repetitions per event sometimes, right? And so what we've done is it's still very, very strong, it's still very, very powerful, but it is less absolute load. Um, you won't see anybody ever touch 600 pounds in a CrossFit competition. Every event in Strongman is 600 pounds plus. Like, y- you might see 1,600 pounds. Like, it's just, it's way, way, way higher, right? But you won't see Strongman ever reach, you know, 65 reps in an exercise. It just never happens. So it's hedged that way. Um, if you look at the avatar for a highly competitive male CrossFitter, 5'9" to 5'11", 190 to 210 pounds. Like, um, you know, Strongest Man, it's 6'6", [laughs] it's 6'2", it's 330, 380, 400. Like, they're just different things, right?

    7. PAPeter Attia2:08:52

       So there's no weight class in Strongman, there's no weight class... Is there a weight class in CrossFit?

    8. AGAndy Galpin2:08:56

       Uh, there are. There are some.

    9. PAPeter Attia2:08:57

       Okay.

    10. AGAndy Galpin2:08:57

        There are some weight classes in Strongman now.

    11. PAPeter Attia2:08:59

        Okay.

    12. AGAndy Galpin2:08:59

        For sure. There's, like, a... It's kind of like big, medium, little-

    13. PAPeter Attia2:09:02

        Okay [laughs]

    14. AGAndy Galpin2:09:02

        ... I think. It's like-

    15. PAPeter Attia2:09:04

        And, and what about-

    16. AGAndy Galpin2:09:04

        There's not-

    17. PAPeter Attia2:09:05

        ... in, in CrossFit, besides the gender difference? Nope.

    18. AGAndy Galpin2:09:08

        Uh, gender and age-

    19. PAPeter Attia2:09:09

        Okay

    20. AGAndy Galpin2:09:09

        ... is the only distinction-

    21. PAPeter Attia2:09:10

        Got it

    22. AGAndy Galpin2:09:10

        ... that, that you have in those ones. Um-

    23. PAPeter Attia2:09:12

        And I, and I guess the reason CrossFit can get away with that is you're gonna get punished the heavier you are in some of the endurance events, and you're gonna get punished the lighter you are in some of the strength events. So the idea is that's probably why everybody kind of coalesces around 200 pounds or 190 pounds.

    24. AGAndy Galpin2:09:28

        Mm-hmm. The other part of it is they have a lot of gymnastics-based movements, and a lot of hanging and pulling things, and you're gonna get hammered if you're over 200 pounds and you have to do 100 pull-ups in, you know, five minutes. You, you just, you're just gonna get crushed on that stuff. So that's, um... It's a thing. There's... Now, CrossFit is wonderful. Um, and this is actually a nice point to talk about another point. If you were to take an elite athlete in any of these categories, there's a misconception here, because I, I got a lot of, uh, from our first conversation, I think a lot of people were like, "Oh my gosh, you're disregarding CrossFitters. Their V02 maxes are elite, their blah, blah, blah, blah." Like, no, they're not. Okay? Like, they're, they're unbelievable athletes, and they are way more cardiovascularly fit than Strongmen, and certainly [laughs] way more than powerlifters and weightlifters. But you're, you're not gonna find the average CrossFitter that has the same V02 max as the average-

    25. PAPeter Attia2:10:20

        Cyclist

    26. AGAndy Galpin2:10:20

        ... equivalently high-level cyclist.

    27. PAPeter Attia2:10:21

        Yeah. No, not even close.

    28. AGAndy Galpin2:10:22

        No chance.

    29. PAPeter Attia2:10:22

        Right.

    30. AGAndy Galpin2:10:23

        So what you're, what you're misrepresenting here is not that they have done something that we have never seen before, it's the fact that they are just phenomenal athletes. Like, just absolutely phenomenal athletes. Um, the reason I'll say this is you know these numbers better, better than I, you can maybe correct me here, but if you were to take a high-level cyclist, their, their peak power is astronomically high, despite the fact that these are, you know, quote, unquote, "pure endurance athletes." That the wattage that they can kick out on a 20-second peak burst on a bike would torch anything any of you have ever seen. Like, it's insanely high, the wattage. Like, like what would be-
18. 2:15:20 – 2:29:20

    Learning from elite athletes, heart rate recovery, V02 max, and other metrics

    1. AGAndy Galpin2:15:20

       is phenomenal.

    2. PAPeter Attia2:15:21

       It just comes back to what you said at the outset, right, which is ultimately specificity wins, and I actually write-

    3. AGAndy Galpin2:15:25

       That's right

    4. PAPeter Attia2:15:25

       ... about this in my book. I was like, look, when I was cycling and it was all I was doing, I was a really one-dimensional athlete.

    5. AGAndy Galpin2:15:34

       Yeah.

    6. PAPeter Attia2:15:34

       Like, my upper body was useless. I could... It's not like-

    7. AGAndy Galpin2:15:37

       Well, you want it to be.

    8. PAPeter Attia2:15:38

       Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    9. AGAndy Galpin2:15:38

       You, you-

    10. PAPeter Attia2:15:39

        I want it to atrophy away. Um-

    11. AGAndy Galpin2:15:41

        Totally

    12. PAPeter Attia2:15:41

        ... y- you know, I, I was not good at running even. Even though I had the engine, running was hard for me. The impact was not pleasant. I couldn't, I couldn't get my... If I was sprinting, I couldn't get my heart rate over 130 'cause I didn't have the leg pounding strength to cope with it.

    13. AGAndy Galpin2:16:00

        Yeah.

    14. PAPeter Attia2:16:00

        Um, you know, no lateral movement, no flexibility, no balance. Like, there was no other dimension to it other than turning pedals over quickly. Again, not to take-

    15. AGAndy Galpin2:16:08

        Yeah

    16. PAPeter Attia2:16:08

        ... anything away from the best cyclists in the world. They're marvels of human physiology, but it's-

    17. AGAndy Galpin2:16:14

        Yeah

    18. PAPeter Attia2:16:14

        ... super, super specific. And again, I think that's true for every athlete we're talking about until... Once we-

    19. AGAndy Galpin2:16:19

        Yeah

    20. PAPeter Attia2:16:19

        ... get into these Strongmen and CrossFit, you know, athletes, though, you start to see what in some ways impresses me a little bit more, which is just broad-

    21. AGAndy Galpin2:16:27

        Absolutely

    22. PAPeter Attia2:16:27

        ... remarkable, uh, feats of strength and endurance across, you know-

    23. AGAndy Galpin2:16:32

        Yeah

    24. PAPeter Attia2:16:32

        ... a, a great range.

    25. AGAndy Galpin2:16:33

        Just to... I mean, think about, uh, last examples. Just think about a, an elite marathon time. Let's call it two hours to make math easy, 'cause it's getting there.

    26. PAPeter Attia2:16:40

        Yeah.

    27. AGAndy Galpin2:16:41

        I mean, basic- technically it's-

    28. PAPeter Attia2:16:41

        I mean

    29. AGAndy Galpin2:16:41

        ... been broken, right?

    30. PAPeter Attia2:16:42

        Yeah, yeah.

Episode duration: 3:10:01