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

[upbeat music] Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. And now for my discussion with Jeff Cavaliere. Jeff, such a pleasure for me to have you here.

I'm glad to be here. It's amazing.

Yeah, I'm a longtime consumer of your content. I've learned a tremendous amount about fitness, uh, both in the weight room, cardio, nutrition, things that I've applied for over a decade. One of your mantras is, uh, you know, "If you want to look like an athlete, train like an athlete," and I think that's something really special that sets aside what you do from what a lot of other, um, very well-qualified people do. What's the sort of contour of a basic program that anybody could think about as a starting place?

I, I think it's, like, a 60/40 split, which would be leaning towards, uh, weight training, you know, strength and, and, and, uh... and then, you know, the conditioning aspect be about 40%. So if you look at it over a course of a training week, I mean, five days in a gym would be a great task. And obviously, not in the gym, it could be done at home, but three days strength training, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, conditioning, Tuesday, Thursday, you know, two days. It's a, it's a pretty easy roundabout way to split that up. Of course, depending upon training goals, and as you said, the aesthetic goals, like, that will shift dramatically. But if you want to see the benefits of both, that's probably the, the effective dose for strength training and the effective dose for conditioning at the bare minimum level. We try to keep our workouts to an hour or less, if possible. Now, depending upon the split that you're following, if you're on a total body split, there's just going to be more that has to be done in a given amount of time. But in general, when you're not focused on that one aspect, but the overall health picture, then you can get the job done in, in under, in under an hour. And again, I always say, on top of if, if you want to look like an athlete, train like an athlete, is you can either train long or you can train hard, but you can't do both. As you start to get older, it's the length of the workout that actually causes more problems than the intensity of what you're doing, particularly if you're warmed up properly, like you said. I've found personally that my warm-up has had to become more of an integral part of my, my workout than it ever has before.

In terms of splits, you mentioned splits.

Mm-hmm.

And so for those who aren't familiar with this, uh, term, splits, it's really, uh, which body parts are you training on which days? I've seen you discuss, you know, three days a week, whole body workouts. I've heard of splits like a pushing one day, uh, pulling another day, legs another day, a day off, repeat. I mean, there's so many variations on this.