back to indexScience of Muscle Growth, Increasing Strength & Muscular Recovery | Huberman Lab Podcast #22
link |
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,
link |
where we discuss science and science-based tools
link |
for everyday life.
link |
I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology
link |
and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.
link |
This podcast is separate from my teaching
link |
and research roles at Stanford.
link |
It is, however, part of my desire and effort
link |
to bring zero cost to consumer information
link |
about science and science-related tools
link |
to the general public.
link |
In keeping with that theme,
link |
I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.
link |
Our first sponsor is InsideTracker.
link |
InsideTracker is a personalized nutrition platform
link |
that analyzes data from your blood and DNA
link |
to help you better understand your body
link |
and reach your health goals.
link |
I've long been a fan of getting blood work done
link |
for the simple reason that many of the things
link |
that impact our immediate and long-term health
link |
can only be analyzed from a quality blood test.
link |
And now, with the advent of modern DNA tests,
link |
we can also get insight into things like metabolic factors
link |
that tell us whether or not we metabolize caffeine well
link |
or certain proteins well,
link |
what our fat metabolism genes are like.
link |
Things of that sort can only be analyzed
link |
from quality blood and DNA tests.
link |
In addition, many of the factors that impact our hormones,
link |
our metabolism, our brain health,
link |
those come back in a blood and DNA test,
link |
and there are many blood and DNA tests out there,
link |
but with InsideTracker,
link |
they give you a lot of clear insight
link |
into what those markers mean and how to adjust them.
link |
They have this terrific platform
link |
that doesn't just give you the numbers back
link |
and tell you if you're high or low in some factor,
link |
but rather it tells you what your levels are
link |
of all those factors
link |
and gives you very simple and clear directives
link |
of changes you might make in your diet,
link |
changes that you might make in your exercise regimen
link |
or sleep, et cetera,
link |
in order to get those markers where they ought to be
link |
and where you would like them to be
link |
in order to optimize yourself.
link |
So they make everything very easy, start to finish.
link |
They can even come to your home
link |
to take the blood and DNA tests if you like.
link |
If you'd like to try InsideTracker,
link |
you can go to insidetracker.com slash Huberman,
link |
and if you do that,
link |
you'll get 25% off any of InsideTracker's plans.
link |
Use the code Huberman at checkout.
link |
Today's podcast is also brought to us
link |
by Belcampo Meat Company.
link |
Belcampo is a regenerative farm in Northern California
link |
that raises organic grass-fed
link |
and finished certified humane meats.
link |
While I don't eat a lot of meat,
link |
when I do, I insist that that meat be of very high quality.
link |
How the animals were cared for is extremely important to me
link |
and the life that the animal had
link |
and what it consumed is very important to me.
link |
So the way that I eat,
link |
I've discussed on this podcast before,
link |
but very briefly, I basically fast until about noon.
link |
Then I eat a piece of beef or chicken
link |
with lunch and a salad.
link |
So that's basically my lunch.
link |
That's what optimizes my levels of alertness
link |
for work throughout the day.
link |
Then in the evening,
link |
I shift over to eating primarily carbohydrates.
link |
That's what allows me to sleep very well.
link |
So I'm not eating huge volumes of meat,
link |
but I am eating meat every day.
link |
Conventionally raised animals are confined to feed lots
link |
and eat a diet of inflammatory grains,
link |
which is bad for them,
link |
and it's bad for us when we eat their meat.
link |
Belcampo's animals graze on open pastures
link |
and seasonal grasses,
link |
resulting in meat that is higher in nutrients
link |
And I've talked before
link |
about the importance of omega-3 fatty acids
link |
for both brain and body health.
link |
And Belcampo meats are high in omega-3 fatty acids.
link |
The way Belcampo raises its animals
link |
isn't just better for your health.
link |
It also has a positive impact on the environment.
link |
It's what's called climate positive and carbon negative,
link |
which means good for the planet and good for us.
link |
My favorite meats from Belcampo
link |
are the ribeye and the flank steaks.
link |
That's typically what I eat.
link |
I think I probably eat about three or four of those
link |
and then I'll eat chicken on some other days.
link |
They're really delicious.
link |
And as I mentioned, they're very good for us.
link |
You can order Belcampo sustainably raised meats
link |
to be delivered straight to your door
link |
using my code Huberman at belcampo.com slash Huberman.
link |
If you do that, you'll get 20% off first time order.
link |
That's belcampo.com slash Huberman
link |
for 20% off your first order.
link |
Today's episode is also brought to us by Headspace.
link |
Headspace is a meditation app backed by 25 published studies
link |
and has over 600,000 five-star reviews.
link |
So I've been meditating on and off
link |
since I was about 15, 16 years old, mostly off at first.
link |
What I've found is that
link |
I'll sometimes start a meditation practice,
link |
but it's very hard to stay with.
link |
And then a few years ago, I discovered Headspace
link |
and I started meditating more regularly.
link |
In fact, very recently,
link |
because I've had an exorbitant amount of work on my plate
link |
and I've been getting less sleep than I would like
link |
in order to complete that work,
link |
I've brought back a regular meditation practice twice a day,
link |
not just my usual once a day.
link |
Headspace makes it really easy.
link |
They have so many meditations on there
link |
and they guide you into the meditation
link |
and out of the meditation in a way
link |
that just makes it very simple
link |
and makes maintaining the practice really straightforward.
link |
Right now, if you want to try Headspace,
link |
you can go to headspace.com slash special offer.
link |
And if you do that, you'll get a free one month trial.
link |
So that's totally free
link |
with their full library of meditations for every situation.
link |
So there's no meditations
link |
that you can't get access to with this offer.
link |
You can get access to everything they've got.
link |
You just go to headspace.com slash special offer.
link |
You get a free one month trial
link |
and hopefully you'll decide to stay with it.
link |
I've found that staying with meditation
link |
has been immensely beneficial for all aspects of my life.
link |
Today's episode of the Huberman Lab Podcast
link |
is our fourth and final episode in this month,
link |
which is all about skills and athletic performance.
link |
Now, in a previous episode,
link |
we talked about science-based,
link |
in particular neuroscience-based tools
link |
for accelerating fat loss.
link |
we talked about ways to improve skill learning,
link |
motor movements, which also included things like music
link |
and piano playing, not just athletic performance.
link |
And we've also been exploring other aspects
link |
of physical performance throughout the entire month.
link |
Today, I want to talk about something
link |
that is vitally important
link |
for not just athletic performance,
link |
but for your entire life and indeed for your longevity,
link |
and that's muscle.
link |
Now, many of you, when you hear the word muscle,
link |
think muscle growth and building big muscles.
link |
And while we will touch on muscle hypertrophy,
link |
muscle growth today,
link |
and science-based protocols to enhance hypertrophy,
link |
we will mainly be talking about muscle
link |
as it relates to the nervous system.
link |
And I can't emphasize this enough.
link |
The whole reason why you have a brain
link |
is so that you can move.
link |
And one of the things that's exquisite and fantastic
link |
about the human brain is that it can direct
link |
all sorts of different kinds of movement,
link |
different speeds of movement,
link |
movement of different durations.
link |
We can train our musculature
link |
to lift heavier and heavier objects,
link |
or we can train our musculature
link |
to take us further and further, so-called endurance.
link |
We can also build smoothness of movement, excuse me,
link |
smoothness of movement,
link |
as well as speed of movement, suppleness of movement.
link |
All of that is governed by the relationship
link |
between the nervous system, neurons,
link |
and their connections to muscle.
link |
So when you hear the science of muscle
link |
and muscle hypertrophy,
link |
you might think, oh, well,
link |
I'm not interested in building muscle,
link |
but muscle does many critical things.
link |
It's important for movement.
link |
It's important for metabolism.
link |
The more muscle you have, and not just muscle size,
link |
but the quality of muscle, that's a real thing,
link |
the higher your metabolism is,
link |
and indeed the healthier you are.
link |
It turns out that jumping ability
link |
and ability to stand up quickly
link |
and to get up off the floor quickly
link |
is one of the most predictive markers of aging
link |
and biological aging, and no surprise,
link |
that is governed by the brain-to-muscle connection.
link |
In addition, muscle and musculature is vital for posture,
link |
and we don't talk about posture enough.
link |
We all have been told we need to sit up straight
link |
or stand up straight,
link |
but posture is vitally important
link |
for how the rest of our body works.
link |
It's vital to how we breathe.
link |
It's actually even vital to how alert or sleepy we are.
link |
So we're going to talk about the musculature for posture.
link |
We also are going to talk about muscle
link |
as it relates to aesthetic things.
link |
Now, these are all linked.
link |
Muscle for metabolism, movement, posture, and aesthetics,
link |
of course, are linked, right?
link |
As our posture changes, our aesthetic changes.
link |
As our posture and aesthetic changes, how we move changes,
link |
and as we improve muscle quality,
link |
whether or not that's increasing muscle size or not,
link |
that changes the way that our entire system,
link |
not just our nervous system and our muscular system,
link |
but our immune system and the other organs of the body work.
link |
So today, as always,
link |
we're going to talk a little bit of mechanism.
link |
I'm going to explain how neurons control muscle,
link |
and then we're going to look at muscle metabolism,
link |
how muscle uses energy.
link |
I promise to make all of this very simple.
link |
I'm actually going to keep it very brief,
link |
probably about 10 minutes total.
link |
And by the end of that 10 minutes,
link |
you will understand a lot
link |
about the neuromuscular connection,
link |
how your brain and nervous system control your muscle
link |
and how those muscles work.
link |
Then we are going to talk about how muscles use energy
link |
and can change how they use energy
link |
for sake of getting stronger.
link |
If you like, for also increasing the size,
link |
so-called hypertrophy of muscle,
link |
and for improving endurance,
link |
as well as for improving posture and how you move generally.
link |
We will touch on some nutritional themes
link |
and how that relates to muscle,
link |
in particular, a specific amino acid
link |
that if it's available in your bloodstream frequently enough
link |
and at sufficient levels can help you build
link |
and improve the quality of muscle.
link |
And we'll talk about specific exercise regimes
link |
as well as, of course, supplementation
link |
and things that can enhance
link |
neuromuscular performance overall.
link |
We are also going to talk about recovery.
link |
Recovery, as everybody knows, is when things improve.
link |
That's when neurons get better at controlling muscle.
link |
That's when muscle grows.
link |
That's when muscle gets more flexible.
link |
None of that actually happens during training.
link |
It happens after training.
link |
And there is a lot of confusion
link |
about how to optimize recovery
link |
and how to measure whether or not you are recovered
link |
and ready to come back in
link |
for another neuromuscular training session.
link |
So we'll talk about that as well.
link |
Today is going to have a lot of protocols
link |
and you're going to come away with a lot of understanding
link |
about how you move, how you work,
link |
and these incredible organs
link |
that we call the nervous system and the musculature,
link |
the so-called neuromuscular system.
link |
Before we dive into today's topic,
link |
I want to just take about three minutes
link |
and cover some essential summary of the previous episode.
link |
In the previous episode, we talked about fat loss,
link |
talked about shiver-induced fat loss.
link |
We talked about neat non-exercise activity thermogenesis
link |
for increasing caloric burn and fat oxidation.
link |
And we talked about how to use cold
link |
specifically to enhance fat loss.
link |
I described a protocol involving
link |
getting into cold of some sort,
link |
whether or not it's ice bath, cold shower,
link |
some form of cold, it could even be a river or an ocean
link |
if you have access to that,
link |
and inducing shiver and then getting out,
link |
not crossing your arms or huddling,
link |
but allowing that cold to evaporate off you
link |
and continuing to shiver
link |
and then getting back into the colder environment of water
link |
or stream or shower, et cetera.
link |
All of that is described
link |
in a beautifully illustrated protocol
link |
that I didn't illustrate,
link |
that's why it's beautifully illustrated,
link |
at thecoldplunge.com.
link |
They've made that protocol for you
link |
and they've made it available free of charge for you.
link |
So there's no obligation there of any kind financially,
link |
you can go to thecoldplunge.com.
link |
There's a little tab that says protocols
link |
and you can download that protocol.
link |
Someone there, I don't know who exactly illustrated it,
link |
and you can come away with a PDF
link |
of what I described in the previous episode.
link |
So I just wanted to make sure
link |
that you're aware of that resource.
link |
The other announcement I'd like to make
link |
is that many of you have asked
link |
how you can help support the podcast
link |
and there's a very straightforward,
link |
zero cost way to do that
link |
and that's to subscribe to our YouTube channel.
link |
So if you go to YouTube,
link |
if you're not already there watching this now,
link |
hit the subscribe button,
link |
that helps us tremendously
link |
to get the word out more broadly about the podcast
link |
and we thank you for your support.
link |
Most people, when they hear the word muscle,
link |
they just think about strength,
link |
but of course muscles are involved in everything that we do.
link |
They are involved in speaking,
link |
they're involved in sitting and standing up,
link |
they're involved in lifting objects, including ourselves.
link |
They are absolutely essential for maintaining how we breathe,
link |
they're absolutely essential for ambulation, for moving,
link |
and for skills of any kind.
link |
So when we think about muscle,
link |
we don't just want to think about muscle,
link |
the meat that is muscle,
link |
but what controls that muscle.
link |
And no surprise, what controls muscle is the nervous system.
link |
The nervous system does that
link |
through three main nodes of control, areas of control,
link |
and I've talked about these before on a previous podcast,
link |
so I will keep this very brief.
link |
Basically, we have upper motor neurons in our motor cortex,
link |
so those are in our skull,
link |
and those are involved in deliberate movement.
link |
So if I decide that I'm going to pick my pen up
link |
and put it down, which is what I'm doing right now,
link |
my upper motor neurons were involved
link |
in generating that movement.
link |
Those upper motor neurons send signals
link |
down to my spinal cord,
link |
where there are two categories of neurons.
link |
One are the lower motor neurons,
link |
and those lower motor neurons send little wires
link |
that we call axons out to our muscles
link |
and cause those muscles to contract.
link |
They do that by dumping chemicals onto the muscle.
link |
In fact, the chemical is acetylcholine.
link |
I've talked before about acetylcholine in the brain,
link |
which is vitally important for focus
link |
and actually can gate neuroplasticity,
link |
the brain's ability to change in response to experience.
link |
But in the neuromuscular system,
link |
acetylcholine released from motor neurons
link |
is the only way that muscles can contract.
link |
Now, there's another category of neurons in the spinal cord
link |
called central pattern generators or CPGs,
link |
and those are involved in rhythmic movements.
link |
Anytime we're walking or doing something
link |
where we don't have to think about it
link |
to do it deliberately, it's just happening reflexively,
link |
that central pattern generators and motor neurons.
link |
Anytime we're doing something deliberately,
link |
the top-down control, as we call it,
link |
from the upper motor neurons comes in
link |
and takes control of that system.
link |
So it's really simple.
link |
You've only got three ingredients.
link |
You've got the upper motor neurons, the lower motor neurons,
link |
and for rhythmic movements that are reflexive,
link |
you've also got the central pattern generators.
link |
So it's a terrifically simple system at that level.
link |
But what we're going to focus on today
link |
is how that system can control muscle
link |
in ways that make that system better.
link |
Now, when I say better, I want to be very specific.
link |
If your goal is to build larger muscles,
link |
there's a way to use your nervous system
link |
to trigger hypertrophy,
link |
to increase the size of those muscles,
link |
and it is indeed controlled by the nervous system.
link |
So you can forget the idea that the muscles have memory
link |
or that muscles grow in response to something
link |
that's just happening within the muscle.
link |
It's the nerve-to-muscle connection
link |
that actually creates hypertrophy.
link |
I'll talk exactly about how to optimize that process.
link |
In addition, if you want to improve endurance
link |
or improve flexibility or suppleness or explosiveness,
link |
that is all accomplished by the way
link |
that the nervous system engages muscles specifically.
link |
And so what that means is we have to ask ourselves,
link |
are we going to take control of the upper motor neurons,
link |
the central pattern generators,
link |
or the lower motor neurons, or all three
link |
in order to get to some end point
link |
of how the nervous system controls muscle.
link |
So neurophysiology 101.
link |
I'll give you one piece of history
link |
because it's important to know.
link |
Sherrington, who won the Nobel Prize,
link |
called movement the final common path.
link |
Why did he say that?
link |
Well, the whole reason for having a nervous system,
link |
the whole reason for having a brain
link |
is so that we can control our movements
link |
in very dedicated ways.
link |
That is one of the reasons,
link |
perhaps the predominant reason why the human brain
link |
You might think, oh, it's so large for thinking
link |
and for creativity.
link |
When you look at the amount of real estate in the brain
link |
that's devoted to different aspects of life,
link |
it's mainly vision, our ability to see, and movement,
link |
our ability to engage in lots of different kinds
link |
of movements, slow movements, fast movements,
link |
explosive, et cetera.
link |
Other animals don't have that ability
link |
because they don't have the mental real estate.
link |
They don't have the neural real estate in their brain.
link |
They have neuromuscular junctions.
link |
They have central pattern generators.
link |
What they don't have are these incredible upper motor neurons
link |
that can direct activity of the muscles
link |
in very specific ways.
link |
So we can all feel blessed that we have this system.
link |
And today I'm going to teach you how to use that system
link |
toward particular end points.
link |
So if we decide that we are going to direct our muscles
link |
in some particular movement of any kind,
link |
whether or not it's a weightlifting exercise
link |
or whether it's a yoga movement,
link |
or simply picking up and putting down a pen,
link |
we are engaging flexors and extensors.
link |
And our body is covered with flexors and extensors all over.
link |
So for instance, our bicep is a flexor
link |
and our tricep is an extensor.
link |
Those are what are called antagonistic muscles.
link |
They move the limbs in opposite directions.
link |
So if you bring your wrist closer to your shoulder,
link |
that's flexion using your bicep.
link |
If you move your wrist further away from your shoulder,
link |
that's extension using your tricep.
link |
And without getting into a lot of detail,
link |
the way that the nerves and brain are wired up to muscle,
link |
make it such that when a flexor is activated,
link |
when the nerve dumps chemical acetylcholine onto the muscle
link |
to activate the biceps, the triceps is inhibited.
link |
It's prevented from engaging.
link |
There are ways to bypass this,
link |
but that's the typical mode of action.
link |
The converse is also true.
link |
When our tricep is inactivated,
link |
when we move our wrist away from our shoulder,
link |
our bicep is inhibited.
link |
And we have flexors like our abdominal muscles
link |
and we have extensors in our lower back.
link |
Many of you probably know this,
link |
but some of you probably don't,
link |
that your spine has flexors to move basically your chin
link |
toward your waist.
link |
And those are your abdominal muscles among others.
link |
And you have extensors that move your chin basically back,
link |
like looking up toward the ceiling,
link |
and those are your extensors.
link |
You have other muscles that are stabilizing muscles
link |
and things of that sort,
link |
but those movements of flexion and extension
link |
and the fact that they are what we call
link |
reciprocally innervated or mutual inhibition,
link |
you hear different language around this,
link |
is characteristic of most of our limb movements, okay?
link |
So hamstring and quadricep,
link |
the hamstring brings the ankle closer back
link |
towards the glutes.
link |
Basically it's lifting your heel up, right?
link |
Which is almost always done toward the back.
link |
Whereas your quadriceps is the extensor,
link |
opposite to the hamstrings.
link |
So you get the idea.
link |
So there's flexors and extensors,
link |
and it's the neurons that control those flexors and extensors
link |
that allow us to move in particular ways.
link |
So now you have heard neuromuscular physiology
link |
in its simplest form, but I do want this to be accessible.
link |
I want to get just briefly,
link |
just briefly into some of the underlying metabolism
link |
of how muscles use and create energy
link |
because in doing that,
link |
we will be in a great position to understand
link |
all the tools that follow
link |
about how to optimize the neuromuscular system
link |
for your particular goals.
link |
So in the previous episode about fat loss,
link |
we talked about lipolysis,
link |
the breakdown of fat into fatty acids
link |
so it can be used as fuel.
link |
And it ended in a step where we got ATP,
link |
which is the bottleneck and final common path
link |
for all energy producing functions in the body.
link |
There are other ways,
link |
but basically ATP is the key element there.
link |
Now with muscles, they don't function on fats normally.
link |
What they are going to function on their ability to move
link |
and their ability to do things
link |
and allow us to move in any way that we want to
link |
is based on a process of glycolysis,
link |
the breakdown of things like glycogen
link |
and glucose into energy.
link |
And it's a very simple process.
link |
You don't have to know any chemistry.
link |
So if I say the words carbon or hydrogen
link |
or something like that,
link |
you don't have to freak out.
link |
You don't have to understand any chemistry.
link |
But basically what happens
link |
is you've got this available sugar resource
link |
that's stored in muscle, okay?
link |
And that's glucose.
link |
And that glucose has six carbons
link |
and six waters basically.
link |
That can be broken down into two sets of three carbons.
link |
So basically you take glucose
link |
and you break it into these two little batches of carbons
link |
that we call pyruvates.
link |
So six divided by two is three.
link |
So you get three and three pyruvates.
link |
And that generates a little bit of ATP of energy,
link |
but just a little bit.
link |
Now, if there's oxygen available, okay?
link |
If there's sufficient oxygen there,
link |
what can happen is that pyruvate
link |
can be brought to the mitochondria
link |
and through a whole set of things
link |
that you probably don't want to hear about right now,
link |
like the electron transport chain and citric acid cycle.
link |
What happens is it's broken down
link |
and you get 28 to 30 ATP, which is a lot of ATP.
link |
So the only things you need to know,
link |
the only things you need to know about this process
link |
is that glucose and glycogen are broken down into pyruvate.
link |
You get a little bit of energy from that.
link |
And when I say energy, I mean the ability to move.
link |
It literally just gets burned up.
link |
But if there's oxygen available, and that's key,
link |
then within the mitochondria, you can create 28 to 30 ATP,
link |
which is a lot of ATP.
link |
Now, what does this mean?
link |
This means that movement of muscle
link |
is metabolically expensive.
link |
And indeed, compared to other tissues,
link |
compared to fat, compared to bone,
link |
compared to almost all other tissues except brain tissue,
link |
muscle is the most metabolically demanding,
link |
which is why people who have more muscle
link |
relative to adipose tissue to fat,
link |
they can eat more and they're more of a furnace.
link |
They just kind of burn that up, okay?
link |
So even if you didn't understand anything that I just said,
link |
what you probably did hear and that I hope you heard
link |
is that if you have oxygen around,
link |
you can create energy from this fuel source
link |
that we call glycogen and glucose.
link |
But what if there isn't oxygen around?
link |
And what is that like?
link |
Well, you've experienced that.
link |
I'm not talking about oxygen in the environment.
link |
I'm talking about oxygen in the muscle.
link |
So if you've ever carried a box while moving,
link |
or you were carrying heavy groceries to the car,
link |
or you were exercising particularly hard
link |
and you felt the burn,
link |
well, that burning, which most people think is lactic acid,
link |
is actually a process by which pyruvate,
link |
which as I said before,
link |
normally could be converted into ATP if there's oxygen.
link |
Well, if there's not enough oxygen
link |
because that muscle is working too hard or too long,
link |
what ends up happening is that a hydrogen molecule
link |
comes in there and you get something called lactate.
link |
So believe it or not, humans don't make lactic acid.
link |
That's another species.
link |
We make lactate and we think,
link |
and we hear that lactate is bad.
link |
We need to buffer the burn or avoid the burn,
link |
that lactic acid and lactate are what prevent us
link |
for performing as well as we ought to be able to,
link |
or for going as far as we possibly could
link |
in an endurance event.
link |
Guess what, that's not true at all.
link |
Lactate has three functions,
link |
all of which are really interesting and really important.
link |
First of all, it's a buffer against acidity.
link |
You don't want muscle to get too acidic
link |
because it can't function.
link |
You don't want any body tissue to get too acidic.
link |
So that burn that you feel is acidity in that environment,
link |
that, and lactate, what most people call lactic acid,
link |
but again, we don't make lactic acid,
link |
lactate is there to buffer that,
link |
to reduce the amount of burn.
link |
So most people have this exactly backwards.
link |
So when you feel that burn, that is not lactic acid,
link |
that is lactate that's present to suppress the burn,
link |
to suppress acidity.
link |
When you feel that burn,
link |
lactate is shuttled to those areas of the muscle,
link |
and there's an actual fuel burning process
link |
where in the absence of oxygen,
link |
you can continue to generate muscular contractions.
link |
Now, this is informative
link |
because it also tells us that that burning,
link |
that acidity that we feel
link |
can inhibit the way that our muscles work,
link |
but that lactate comes in
link |
and allows our muscles to continue to function.
link |
So we'll talk a little bit more
link |
about what this whole lactate thing and the burn means,
link |
but it's a really important process,
link |
and it's amazing to me that most people understand it
link |
in exactly the incorrect way.
link |
They think, oh, lactic acid is bad and the burn is bad.
link |
No, it reveals a number of really important things
link |
are going on with this vital molecule lactate,
link |
which can reduce acidity, reduce the burn,
link |
as well as act as a fuel.
link |
Now, here's where it gets really, really cool,
link |
and if you don't have enough of an incentive to exercise
link |
based on all the information out there
link |
about how it'll make you live longer
link |
and make your heart better, et cetera,
link |
here's a reason that regardless
link |
of what kind of exercise you do,
link |
if it's weight training or running or cycling or swimming,
link |
that every once in a while, about 10% of the time,
link |
you should exercise to the point of intensity
link |
where you start to feel that so-called burn, right?
link |
The reason for that is that lactate
link |
shows up to the site of the burn, so to speak,
link |
and it acts as a hormonal signal
link |
for other organs of the body in a very positive way, okay?
link |
As you may recall from a very early episode
link |
of the Huberman Lab Podcast,
link |
I talked about what a hormone is and how it works.
link |
We have lots of different kinds of hormones,
link |
but hormones are chemicals that are released
link |
in one location in the body and travel,
link |
have effects on lots of other organs of the body.
link |
So when I say that lactate acts as a hormonal signal,
link |
what I mean is that it's in a position to influence tissues
link |
that are outside of the muscle,
link |
and basically it can send signals to the heart,
link |
to the liver, and to the brain,
link |
and it can have effects on the heart,
link |
the liver, and the brain that are very positive, okay?
link |
So just to zoom out for a second,
link |
I promise we won't get any more technical than this.
link |
We will get into tools and protocols
link |
that are really straightforward,
link |
but what I'm telling you is that if you feel a burn
link |
from a particular exercise or movement,
link |
that burn is going to be buffered
link |
by this molecule we call lactate.
link |
Lactate will then provide additional fuel
link |
for additional work.
link |
So this is a good incentive provided you can do it safely
link |
to quote unquote work through the burn.
link |
That burn acts as a beacon to the lactate,
link |
which comes in and allows you to do more work.
link |
It's not a signal to stop necessarily.
link |
I mean, stop if you're doing something unsafe,
link |
but it's a signal that lactate should come in
link |
and allow you to continue to do work,
link |
and it can act as a hormonal signal.
link |
Lactate can then travel to the heart
link |
and to the liver and to the brain
link |
and can enhance their function in positive ways,
link |
not just in those moments,
link |
but in the period of time that follows.
link |
So many people are curious about how they can exercise
link |
to make their brain better.
link |
That's one of the most common questions I get.
link |
What I'm telling you is that provided you can do it safely
link |
by engaging the so-called burn,
link |
which is a different threshold for everybody, right?
link |
Your hill run will be different than my hill run
link |
to generate the burn,
link |
but provided you can do that for about 10% of your workouts
link |
or of an individual workout or activity of any kind,
link |
you are generating the activity
link |
of this lactate-based hormonal signal
link |
that can improve the function of neurons.
link |
And it does that, if you want to know for the aficionados,
link |
by improving the function of another cell type
link |
called the astrocytes, which are a glial cell type, okay,
link |
which are very involved in clearance of debris
link |
They're involved in the formation of synapses,
link |
connections between neurons in the brain.
link |
So put simply, if you're an exerciser,
link |
if you're doing movement of any kind,
link |
and you're interested in allocating some of that movement
link |
toward enhancing brain, heart, and liver health,
link |
there is a nice set of scientific data
link |
that points to the fact that getting lactate
link |
shuttled to the muscles by engaging this burning sensation
link |
is advantageous for the health of those other tissues.
link |
So as I mentioned, that burn is present
link |
from lack of oxygen being present,
link |
and then the hydrogen comes in and you get this lactate.
link |
But this process of lactate acting as a buffer of fuel
link |
and a positive hormonal signal for other tissues
link |
occurs only if there's oxygen.
link |
So if you feel the burn,
link |
you definitely want to focus on your breathing at that point
link |
that would be the time to take deep inhales
link |
and try and bring more oxygen into your system.
link |
It's definitely not a time to hold your breath.
link |
And if ever you've run to the point of feeling the burn
link |
and then you were exercising in any way on the treadmill
link |
or on the bike or whatever, and felt that burn,
link |
and then you held your breath, it feels much more intense.
link |
By breathing, you bring lactate to the site
link |
and you are able to allow lactate to act more
link |
as a buffer of fuel and a hormonal signal.
link |
And the reason I brought this up today is because,
link |
as I mentioned, so many people are interested
link |
in using exercise, not just for sake of improving
link |
physical health and wellbeing and performance,
link |
but also for enhancing their brain.
link |
And there are a lot of data out there
link |
speaking to the findings that exercise of various kinds
link |
can increase neurogenesis, the creation of new neurons.
link |
Well, the unfortunate news is that while that's true in mice,
link |
there is very little evidence for enhanced neurogenesis
link |
from exercise or otherwise in humans.
link |
There's a little bit, and there are a few sites
link |
within the brain, such as the dentate gyrus
link |
of the hippocampus, which may be involved
link |
in the formation of new memories.
link |
To be clear, the dentate gyrus is definitely involved
link |
in the formation of new memories.
link |
Whether or not the new neurons that are added there
link |
in humans are involved in new memories is,
link |
the evidence for that is weak at best, frankly,
link |
whereas in animals, the data are quite strong.
link |
But most of the data point to the fact
link |
that hormonal signals, things that are transported
link |
in the blood during exercise,
link |
are what are beneficial for the brain, excuse me,
link |
and that those signals are not causing the increase
link |
in the number of neurons in the dentate gyrus or otherwise,
link |
that it's more about the health of the connections
link |
between the neurons, growth factors of various kinds,
link |
things like IGF-1, there's a long list of these things.
link |
So if you've heard that exercise increases the number
link |
of neurons in your brain, well, that's not true.
link |
And that probably is a good thing, frankly,
link |
because we always hear more neurons,
link |
more neurons as if it's a good thing,
link |
but the brain doesn't do so well
link |
with bringing in entirely new elements.
link |
It has a hard time negotiating that
link |
and making use of those new elements.
link |
We know about this from things like the cochlear implant,
link |
where deaf people are given a device
link |
where they suddenly can hear.
link |
Some people really like that.
link |
Deaf people really like that and can benefit from it.
link |
Other deaf people find that it's very intrusive,
link |
that it's hard to take an existing neural circuit
link |
in the brain and incorporate a lot
link |
of new information into it.
link |
So new neurons, as great as that sounds,
link |
more neurons, more neurons,
link |
it actually might not be the best way
link |
for the nervous system to change and modify itself
link |
and to promote its own longevity.
link |
So when I tell you not such great evidence
link |
for new neurons past puberty,
link |
that's what the data really show in humans.
link |
And I sort of knock back the data
link |
on exercise and neurogenesis.
link |
Don't let that depress you.
link |
If you have dementia in your family,
link |
don't translate that into necessarily
link |
that you will develop dementia.
link |
Understand that exercise is still beneficial
link |
for the brain and other aspects of the nervous system,
link |
but that it's going to be doing it
link |
through these hormonal signals,
link |
things like IGF-1, things like this lactate pathway
link |
when you experience the burn from exercise.
link |
And again, you don't want to try
link |
and get this feeling of a burn
link |
throughout the entire episode of exercise.
link |
That'll be far too intense and would inhibit your recovery.
link |
I don't think it'd be good for performance either.
link |
It's only about 10% of your total effort
link |
in any one exercise bout
link |
that's going to give you this positive effect.
link |
So now you know how to devote a small portion
link |
of your exercise, 10%,
link |
in order for muscle and lactate to benefit other tissues,
link |
namely your heart, your liver, and your brain.
link |
I'd now like to shift our attention
link |
to how to use specific aspects of muscular contraction
link |
to improve muscle hypertrophy, muscle growth,
link |
as well as improving muscle strength.
link |
There are a lot of reasons to want to get stronger.
link |
And I should just mention that it's not always the case
link |
that getting stronger involves muscles getting bigger.
link |
There are ways for muscles to get stronger
link |
without getting bigger.
link |
However, increasing the size of a muscle
link |
almost inevitably increases the strength of that muscle,
link |
at least to some degree.
link |
Reasons why most everyone
link |
should want to get their muscles stronger
link |
is that muscles are generally getting progressively weaker
link |
across the lifespan.
link |
So when I say getting stronger,
link |
it's not necessarily about being able to move
link |
increasing amounts of weight in the gym.
link |
Although if that's your goal,
link |
what I'm about to discuss will be relevant to that.
link |
But rather to offset some of the normal decline
link |
in strength and posture and the ability to generate
link |
a large range of movement safely that occurs as we age.
link |
As I mentioned at the beginning of the episode,
link |
we just tend to lose function in this neuromuscular system
link |
And doing things to offset that
link |
has been shown again and again to be beneficial
link |
for the neuromuscular system, for protection of injury,
link |
for enhancing the strength of bones and bone density.
link |
So there are a lot of reasons to use resistance exercise
link |
that extend far beyond
link |
just the desire to increase muscle size.
link |
Because I know many of you
link |
are interested in increasing muscle size,
link |
but many of you are not.
link |
So there's an important principle of muscle physiology
link |
called the Henneman size principle.
link |
And the Henneman size principle essentially says that
link |
we recruit what are called motor units.
link |
Motor units are just the connections
link |
between nerve and muscle in a pattern that staircases
link |
from low threshold to high threshold.
link |
What this means is when you pick up something that is light,
link |
you're going to use the minimum amount
link |
of nerve to muscle energy in order to move that thing.
link |
Likewise, when you pick up an object that's heavy,
link |
you're going to use the minimum amount
link |
of nerve to muscle connectivity and energy
link |
in order to move that object.
link |
So it's basically a conservation of energy principle.
link |
Now, if you continue to exert effort of movement,
link |
what will happen is you will tend to recruit
link |
more and more motor units with time.
link |
And that process of recruiting more neurons,
link |
more lower motor neurons,
link |
as if you recall from the beginning of the episode,
link |
these lower motor neurons are in our spinal cord
link |
and they actually dump a chemical, acetylcholine on muscle,
link |
cause the muscles to contract.
link |
As you recruit more and more of these motor units,
link |
these connections between these lower motor neurons
link |
and muscle, that's when you start to get changes
link |
That's when you open the gate for the potential
link |
for the muscles to get stronger and to get larger,
link |
if that's what your goal is.
link |
And so the way this process works
link |
has been badly misunderstood in the kind of online
link |
literature of weight training and bodybuilding
link |
and even in sports physiology.
link |
The Henneman size principle is kind of a foundational
link |
principle within muscle physiology,
link |
but many people have come to interpret it by saying
link |
that the way to recruit high threshold motor units,
link |
the ones that are hard to get to,
link |
is to just use heavy weights.
link |
And that's actually not the case.
link |
As we'll talk about, the research supports
link |
that weights in a very large range of sort of a percentage
link |
of your maximum, anywhere from 30 to 80%.
link |
So weights that are not very light,
link |
but are moderately light, too heavy can cause changes
link |
in the connections between nerve and muscle
link |
that lead to muscle strength and muscle hypertrophy.
link |
Put differently, heavy weights can help build muscle
link |
and strength, but they are not required.
link |
What one has to do is adhere to a certain number
link |
of parameters, just a couple of key variables
link |
that I'll spell out for you.
link |
And if you do that, you can greatly increase
link |
muscle hypertrophy, muscle size, and or muscle strength
link |
if that's what you want to do.
link |
And you don't necessarily have to use heavy weights
link |
in order to do that.
link |
Now I'm sure the power lifters and the people
link |
that like to move heavy weights around will say,
link |
no, if you want to get strong,
link |
you absolutely have to lift heavy weights.
link |
And that might be true if you want to get very strong,
link |
but for most people who are interested
link |
in supporting their muscular,
link |
such that they offset any age-related decline in strength
link |
or in increasing hypertrophy and strength to some degree,
link |
there really isn't a need to lie
link |
about the Henneman size principle,
link |
which many people out there are doing,
link |
and claiming that you absolutely need to use
link |
the heaviest weights possible
link |
in order to build strength and muscle.
link |
So I'm going to explain how all of this works in simple terms.
link |
So first of all, let's just talk about what hypertrophy is
link |
and what strength changes in the muscle are.
link |
We can make this very simple as well.
link |
If this were a muscle physiology class,
link |
we would talk all about myofibrils and sarcomeres
link |
and all that stuff.
link |
We're not going to do that.
link |
That's not the purpose of today's conversation.
link |
If you're interested in that,
link |
as well as a lot of the other information
link |
that I'm going to discuss in more detail,
link |
I highly encourage you to check out the YouTube channel
link |
and the writings of Dr. Andy Galpin.
link |
He's a PhD and a full professor in exercise physiology.
link |
He's extremely knowledgeable in this entire area
link |
of science-based tools for hypertrophy,
link |
how strength and hypertrophy really work.
link |
His lab does everything from biopsy on muscles,
link |
working with athletes and typical folks as well.
link |
A lot of the information that you're going to hear from me
link |
in the next 15 minutes or so
link |
comes from an extensive exploration of the work
link |
that he and his colleagues have done,
link |
as well as folks like Brad Schoenfeld,
link |
another academic who's superb
link |
in this whole space of muscle physiology,
link |
and from a lengthy conversation that I had with Andy,
link |
Dr. Galpin, prior to this episode.
link |
So if we want to think about muscle hypertrophy,
link |
we have to ask what is changing
link |
when muscles get larger or stronger?
link |
And there are really just three ways
link |
that muscles can be stimulated to change.
link |
So let's review those three ways
link |
and talk about what happens inside the muscle.
link |
So there are three major stimuli
link |
for changing the way that muscle works
link |
and making muscles stronger, larger, or better in some way.
link |
And those are stress, tension, and damage.
link |
Those three things don't necessarily all have to be present,
link |
but stress of some kind has to exist.
link |
Something has to be different
link |
in the way that the nerve communicates with the muscle
link |
and the way that the muscle contracts or performs
link |
that makes the muscle need to change.
link |
So this is very reminiscent of neuroplasticity in the brain.
link |
Something needs to happen.
link |
Certain chemicals need to be present.
link |
Certain processes need to happen,
link |
or else a tissue simply won't change itself.
link |
But if those processes and events do happen,
link |
then the tissue has essentially no option
link |
except but to change.
link |
So muscles move, as I mentioned,
link |
because nerves dump chemical onto the muscles,
link |
but they move because they have these things called myosin
link |
and actin filaments.
link |
And if you want to read up on this,
link |
you can look on the internet.
link |
You can put the sliding filament theory
link |
of muscle contraction
link |
if you really want to go deep down that rabbit hole.
link |
You can learn about this in a muscle physiology class.
link |
But basically, along the length of the muscle,
link |
you have what's called myosin.
link |
And just think of myosin as kind of like a wire.
link |
It's like a bunch of beads and wires
link |
that extend across the muscle.
link |
I think that's the simplest way to describe it.
link |
And the myosin is surrounded
link |
by these little beads called actin.
link |
The way muscles get bigger
link |
is that basically the myosin gets thicker.
link |
It's a protein, right?
link |
And it gets thicker.
link |
So put this in your mind.
link |
If you're listening to this,
link |
or even if you're watching it on YouTube,
link |
the way to think about this whole actin-myosin thing
link |
and muscles getting bigger
link |
is imagine that you're holding a bouquet of balloons,
link |
a bunch of balloons by their strings,
link |
except you're not holding the strings all at their bottom.
link |
So the bouquet isn't nicely arranged.
link |
It's not like some balloons that are all up at the top
link |
and you're holding the strings down at the bottom.
link |
Imagine that one of the balloons
link |
is very close to your hand.
link |
Another one is a little bit higher up.
link |
And so this bouquet is very disorganized.
link |
In other words, the string extending out of your hand,
link |
the strings, rather, extending out of your hand
link |
are all different lengths.
link |
And so the balloons are all over the place.
link |
That's essentially what myosin looks like in the muscle.
link |
And those strings are what we call the filaments.
link |
And then the myosin head is the balloon.
link |
When you stress a muscle properly,
link |
or you give it sufficient tension,
link |
or you damage the muscle just enough,
link |
there's an adaptive response that takes place
link |
where protein is synthesized,
link |
and it's a very specific protein, it's myosin.
link |
The myosin gets thicker.
link |
In other words, the balloons get bigger.
link |
So the way to think about muscle growth
link |
and the way to think about muscles getting stronger
link |
is that those balloons get bigger
link |
and the muscle gets thicker.
link |
Now, the question then should be,
link |
as always, how does that happen?
link |
I mean, the muscle doesn't really know anything
link |
about what's happening in the outside world.
link |
The way it happens is the nerve,
link |
the neuron has to tell the muscle to get stronger.
link |
And it does that through what we call a signaling cascade.
link |
It talks to the muscle in terms of chemicals.
link |
It doesn't whisper to it or shout, hey, get bigger.
link |
What it does, it releases certain chemicals
link |
that within the muscle,
link |
there are certain chemicals released, rather,
link |
that make those balloons, as I'm referring to them,
link |
the myosin gets thicker.
link |
So let's talk about the stimulus for doing that.
link |
And if already in your mind you're imagining,
link |
oh my goodness, these balloons of muscle
link |
are going to get thick, thick, thick, thick, thick,
link |
and it's just going to spiral out of control,
link |
don't worry about that.
link |
People invest a ton of time and energy
link |
into trying to make their muscles larger.
link |
It's actually much harder for people to do
link |
than you might think.
link |
But I do want to give one exception
link |
because it illustrates an important principle
link |
of where we're headed next.
link |
Everybody has imbalances in how muscles can grow,
link |
how well muscles can grow or how poorly
link |
or how challenging it is for their muscles to grow.
link |
Now, many people who are afraid of like getting too bulky,
link |
for instance, are afraid of lifting weights.
link |
But I think the research shows now
link |
that everyone of pretty much every age
link |
should be doing some sort of resistance exercise,
link |
even if that's body weight exercises,
link |
in order to offset this age-related decline
link |
in muscle contractile ability, muscle strength, et cetera,
link |
improved bone density.
link |
There's nothing good about getting frail and weak over time.
link |
And people who invest the effort into doing resistance
link |
exercises of some kind, whether or not it's with bands
link |
or with weights or with body weight,
link |
really benefit tremendously at a whole body level,
link |
at a systemic level, as well as in terms of muscle strength.
link |
There is a good predictor of how well
link |
or how efficient you will be in building the strength
link |
and or if you like the size of a given muscle.
link |
And it has everything to do with those upper motor neurons
link |
that are involved in deliberate control of muscle.
link |
You can actually do this test right now.
link |
You can just kind of march across your body mentally
link |
and see whether or not you can independently contract
link |
any or all of your muscles.
link |
So for instance, if you are sitting in a chair
link |
or you're standing, see whether or not
link |
you can contract your calf muscle
link |
just using those upper motor neurons,
link |
sending a signal down and deliberately
link |
isolating the calf muscle, okay?
link |
If you can contract the calf muscle hard
link |
to the point where that muscle almost feels
link |
like it's starting to cramp,
link |
like it hurts just a little bit,
link |
it's not going to be extremely painful
link |
nor is it going to have no sensation whatsoever,
link |
chances are you have very good upper motor neuron
link |
And chances are, if you can isolate that,
link |
what they call the brain or mind muscle connection,
link |
and you can contract the muscle to the point
link |
where it cramps a little bit,
link |
that you hold a decent to high potential
link |
to change the strength and the size of that muscle
link |
if you train it properly.
link |
Now, if you have a hard time doing that,
link |
chances are you won't be able to do that.
link |
If, for instance, you focus on your back muscle,
link |
like we all have these muscles called the lat,
link |
the latissimus dorsi muscles,
link |
which basically are involved in chin ups
link |
and things like that, but their function
link |
from a more of a kinesiology standpoint
link |
is to move the elbow back behind the body, okay?
link |
So it's not about flexing your bicep,
link |
it's about moving your elbow back behind your body.
link |
If you can do that mentally,
link |
or you can do that physical movement
link |
of moving your elbow back behind your body
link |
and you can contract that muscle hard,
link |
chances are that you have the capacity
link |
to enhance the strength and or size
link |
of that particular muscle
link |
because you have the neural control of that muscle.
link |
This is a key feature of the neuromuscular system
link |
to appreciate as we begin to talk more
link |
about specific protocols
link |
because everything about muscle hypertrophy,
link |
about stimulating muscle growth
link |
is about generating isolated contractions,
link |
about challenging specific muscles in a very unnatural way.
link |
Whereas with strength,
link |
it's about using musculature as a system,
link |
moving weights, moving resistance, moving the body.
link |
The specific goal of hypertrophy
link |
is to isolate specific nerve to muscle pathways
link |
so that you stimulate the chemical
link |
and signaling transduction events in muscles
link |
so that those muscles respond by getting larger.
link |
So there's a critical distinction
link |
in terms of getting stronger
link |
versus trying to get muscles to be larger,
link |
hypertrophy per se,
link |
and it has to do with how much you isolate those muscles.
link |
Muscle isolation is not a natural phenomenon.
link |
It's not something that we normally do.
link |
When we walk, we don't think,
link |
okay, right calf contract, left calf contract.
link |
No, you just generate those rhythmic movements.
link |
And of course, there's no reason for them
link |
to get stronger or larger in response to those movements.
link |
Let's say you were to do a kind of strange experiment
link |
of attaching 30 pound weights to your ankles
link |
and you were to do those movements.
link |
Well, if you weren't specifically contracting your calves
link |
in each step, there's no reason for the calves
link |
to take on the bulk of the work
link |
and you would distribute that work
link |
across your hip flexors and other aspects
link |
of your musculature.
link |
Your whole nervous system seeks to gain efficiency.
link |
It seeks to spread out the effort.
link |
So you can nest this as a principle for yourself,
link |
which is if you want to get stronger,
link |
it's really about moving progressively greater loads
link |
or increasing the amount of weight that you move.
link |
Whereas if you're specifically interested
link |
in generating hypertrophy,
link |
it's all about trying to generate those really hard,
link |
almost painful localized contractions of muscle.
link |
Now, of course, how much weight you use
link |
in order to generate those contractions
link |
will also impact hypertrophy.
link |
But I think most people don't really understand
link |
the mind muscle connection.
link |
It sounds like a great thing,
link |
but it's actually one of the things you want to avoid
link |
if your goal is simply to become more supple
link |
or to become stronger.
link |
You want to do the movements properly and safely, of course,
link |
but it's the opposite of hypertrophy
link |
where with hypertrophy, you're really trying to make
link |
that particular muscle, sometimes two muscles,
link |
do the majority, if not all the work.
link |
Whereas in moving force loads,
link |
in trying to generate activity of any kind,
link |
like lifting a bar or doing a chin up or something,
link |
those so-called compound movements
link |
that involve a lot of muscle groups,
link |
if your goal is to be better at those,
link |
you want to avoid isolating any one particular muscle.
link |
Now, I know this probably comes across
link |
as a kind of a obvious duh,
link |
especially to the folks that have spent a lot of time
link |
in the gym aimed at getting hypertrophy,
link |
but I think most people don't appreciate
link |
that it's the nerve to muscle connections
link |
and the distinction between isolating nerve
link |
to muscle connections versus distributing the work
link |
of nerve to muscle connections that's vital
link |
in determining whether or not you generate hypertrophy,
link |
isolated nerve to muscle contractions,
link |
versus strength and offsetting strength loss,
link |
which would be distributed nerve to muscle connections.
link |
If ever there was an area of practical science
link |
that was very confused, very controversial,
link |
and almost combative at times,
link |
it would be this issue of how best to train.
link |
I suppose the only thing that's even more barbed wire
link |
of a conversation than that is how best to eat for health.
link |
Those seem to be the two most common areas of online battle.
link |
And the scientific literature has a lot to say
link |
about both of those things.
link |
Again, my sources for what I'm about to tell you
link |
are Professor Andy Galpin and colleagues.
link |
I know there are other excellent people
link |
out there in the field, but I really trust his work.
link |
He does very controlled studies.
link |
He spent a lot of time in this space.
link |
And what's really exciting is that
link |
in just the last three years or so,
link |
there's been a tremendous amount of information
link |
to come out about the practical steps that one can take
link |
in order to maximize the benefits
link |
of resistance exercise of any kind.
link |
So I'm going to talk about those
link |
and I'm going to talk about the research.
link |
I will provide some links,
link |
both to a couple of the more in-depth tutorials
link |
from Dr. Galpin, as well as some of the papers
link |
that the information I'm about to tell you stems from.
link |
There's a lot of information saying
link |
that you need to move weights that are 80 to 90%
link |
of your one rep maximum or 70%
link |
or cycle that for three weeks on
link |
and then go to more moderate weights.
link |
There are a lot of paths, as some people say,
link |
there are a lot of ways to add up numbers to get 100.
link |
There's a near infinite number of ways
link |
to add up different numbers to get to 100.
link |
And what's very clear now
link |
from all the literature that's transpired
link |
and especially from the literature in this last three years
link |
is that once you know roughly your one repetition maximum,
link |
the maximum amount of weight
link |
that you can perform an exercise with
link |
for one repetition in good form, full range of motion,
link |
that it's very clear that moving weights
link |
or using bands or using body weight, for instance,
link |
in the 30 to 80% of one rep maximum,
link |
that is going to be the most beneficial range
link |
in terms of muscle hypertrophy and strength,
link |
so muscle growth and strength.
link |
And there will be a bias.
link |
If you're moving weights that are in the 75%, 80% range,
link |
or maybe even going above that 85 and 90%,
link |
you're going to bias your improvements
link |
towards strength gains, this is true.
link |
And if you use weights
link |
that are in the 30% of your one repetition maximum
link |
or 40% or 50% and doing many more repetitions, of course,
link |
then you are biasing towards hypertrophy
link |
and what some people like to call muscle endurance,
link |
but that's a little bit of a complicated term
link |
because endurance we almost always think of
link |
as relating to running or swimming
link |
or some long bouts of activity.
link |
So 30 to 80% of one repetition maxims,
link |
it doesn't really seem to matter for sake of hypertrophy,
link |
except at the far ends
link |
when you're really trying to bias for strength.
link |
Now, it is clear, however,
link |
that one needs to perform those sets to failure
link |
where you can't perform another repetition
link |
in good form again or near to failure.
link |
And there's all sorts of interesting nomenclature
link |
that's popping up all over the internet,
link |
some of which is scientific,
link |
some of which is not scientific
link |
about how you are supposed to perceive
link |
how close you were to failure, et cetera.
link |
But there are some very interesting principles
link |
that relate to how the nerves connect to the muscles
link |
that strongly predict whether or not this exercise
link |
that you're performing will be beneficial for you or not.
link |
So here's how it goes.
link |
For individuals that are untrained,
link |
meaning they have been doing resistance exercise
link |
for anywhere from zero, probably out to about two years,
link |
although for some people it might be zero to one year,
link |
but those are the so-called beginners.
link |
They're sort of untrained.
link |
For those people, the key parameter
link |
seems to be to perform enough sets
link |
of a given exercise per muscle per week, okay?
link |
The same is also true for people that have been training
link |
for one or two years or more.
link |
What differs is how many sets to perform
link |
depending on whether or not you're trained or untrained.
link |
So let's say you're somebody
link |
who's been doing some resistance exercise
link |
kind of on and off over the years,
link |
and you decide you want to get serious about that
link |
for sake of sport or offsetting
link |
age-related declines in strength.
link |
The range of sets to do in order to improve strength,
link |
to activate these cascades in the muscle
link |
ranges anywhere from two, believe it or not,
link |
Again, these are sets per week,
link |
and they don't necessarily all have to be performed
link |
in the same weight training session.
link |
I will talk about numbers of sessions.
link |
So it appears that five sets per week
link |
in this 30% to 80% of the one repetition maximum range,
link |
getting close to failure,
link |
or occasionally actually going to full muscular failure,
link |
which isn't really full muscular failure,
link |
but the inability to generate a contraction of the muscle
link |
or move the weight in good form,
link |
I'll go deeper into that in a moment,
link |
but about five sets per week is what's required
link |
just to maintain your muscles.
link |
So think about that.
link |
If you're somebody who's kind of averse
link |
to resistance training,
link |
you are going to lose muscle size and strength,
link |
your metabolism will drop, your posture will get worse,
link |
everything in the context of nerve to muscle connectivity
link |
will get worse over time,
link |
unless you are generating five sets or more
link |
of this 30% to 80% of your one repetition maximum per week.
link |
Okay, so what this means is for the typical person
link |
who hasn't done a lot of weight training,
link |
you need to do at least five sets per muscle group.
link |
Now that's just to maintain,
link |
and then there's this huge range that goes all the way up
link |
to 15 and in some case, 20 sets per week.
link |
Now, how many sets you perform is going to depend
link |
on the intensity of the work that you perform.
link |
This is where it gets a little bit controversial,
link |
but I think nowadays most people agree
link |
and Dr. Galpin confirmed that 10%,
link |
not to be confused with the 10% we discussed earlier,
link |
but 10% of the sets of a given workout
link |
or 10% of workouts overall
link |
should be of the high intensity sort
link |
where one is actually working to muscular failure.
link |
Now I say not true muscular failure,
link |
because in theory you have a concentric movement,
link |
which is the kind of lifting of the weight,
link |
and then you have the eccentric portion
link |
of muscle contraction, which is the lowering.
link |
And the eccentric movements,
link |
because of the way that muscle fibers lengthen
link |
and that sliding actin myosin that we talked about before,
link |
you're always stronger in lowering something
link |
than you are in lifting it.
link |
But the point being that most of your training,
link |
most of your sets should be not to failure.
link |
And the reason for that is it allows you
link |
to do more volume of work
link |
without fatiguing the nervous system
link |
and depleting the nerve to muscle connection
link |
in ways that are detrimental.
link |
So we can make this simple.
link |
Perform anywhere from five to 15 sets
link |
of resistance exercise per week, and that's per muscle,
link |
and that's in this 30 to 80%
link |
of what your one repetition maximum.
link |
That seems to be the most scientifically supported way
link |
of offsetting any decline in muscle strength
link |
if you're working in the kind of five set range
link |
and in increasing muscle strength
link |
when you start to get up into the 10 and 15 set range.
link |
Now the caveat to that is everyone varies
link |
and muscles vary in terms of their recoverability.
link |
Depending on how well you can control
link |
the contraction of muscles deliberately,
link |
and you can actually figure that out by sort of marching.
link |
You might take five minutes
link |
and just kind of march across your body
link |
and mentally try and control the contractions of muscles
link |
in a very deliberate way to the point
link |
where you can generate a hard contraction.
link |
And you may have to move a limb
link |
in order to do this by the way.
link |
I'm not talking about just mentally contracting your bicep
link |
without moving your wrist.
link |
I'm talking about doing that without any weight in hand
link |
or any band or any resistance.
link |
If you can generate a high intensity contraction
link |
using these upper motor neuron
link |
to lower motor neuron pathways to muscle,
link |
you might think, well, I should perform many more sets.
link |
But actually the opposite is true.
link |
If you can generate high intensity muscular contractions
link |
using your brain, using your neurons,
link |
it will take fewer sets in order to stimulate the muscle
link |
to maintain itself and to stimulate the muscle
link |
in order to grow or get stronger.
link |
So the more efficient you are in recruiting motor units,
link |
remember Henneman's size principle,
link |
the recruitment of more motor units,
link |
which isn't just muscles, it's nerve to muscle connections.
link |
The better you are at doing that,
link |
the more you will recruit
link |
these so-called high threshold motor units,
link |
the ones that are hard to get to,
link |
the more you will kick off the cascades of things
link |
within muscle that stimulate muscle growth and strength.
link |
So if you have muscles that are challenging to contract,
link |
it's going to take more sets
link |
in order to stimulate the desired effect in those muscles,
link |
If you have muscles that you are very good
link |
at generating force within, it's going to take fewer sets.
link |
Now, how many sets?
link |
You are going to have to determine that.
link |
It's going to depend.
link |
For those of you that are using like 50%
link |
of your one repetition maximum,
link |
because you're doing a lot of repetitions,
link |
you might find that three or four,
link |
five sets will maintain the muscle.
link |
You might decide to do that once at one point in the week
link |
and then do it again, right?
link |
So if you're going for 10 sets a week,
link |
you can divide that among two sessions,
link |
or you can do that all in one session.
link |
The data really show it doesn't matter.
link |
There are some differences in terms of
link |
whether or not you're trying to generate maximum intensity
link |
within a workout or whether or not you want
link |
to spread that out.
link |
But in general, resistance workouts of any kind
link |
tend to be best favored by workouts
link |
that are somewhere between 45 minutes and 60 minutes.
link |
And generally not longer than 60 minutes,
link |
because that's when all the things like cortisol
link |
and some of the inflammatory pathways really start
link |
to create a situation in the muscle and in the body
link |
that's not so great for you.
link |
So it's not a hard and fast rule, you know,
link |
that the ax doesn't drop at 60 minutes,
link |
but it's pretty clear that performing
link |
this five to 15 sets per week,
link |
whether or not it's in one workout
link |
or whether that's divided up across multiple workouts
link |
is really what's going to be most beneficial.
link |
And please do keep in mind Henneman's size principle
link |
and the recruitment of motor units.
link |
And remember the better you are at contracting
link |
particular muscles and isolating those muscles,
link |
the fewer sets likely you need to do
link |
in order to get the desired effect.
link |
Now, what about people who have been training for a while?
link |
If you're somebody who's been doing weight training
link |
for a while, the data point to the fact
link |
that more volume can be beneficial,
link |
even for muscles that you are very efficient
link |
Now, the curve on this, the graph on this
link |
begins again at about five sets per week
link |
for maintaining a given muscle group
link |
and extends all the way out to 25 or 30 sets per week.
link |
However, there are individuals who for whatever reason
link |
can generate so much force,
link |
they're so good at training muscles
link |
that they can generate so much force
link |
in just four or six or eight sets
link |
that doing this large volume of work
link |
is actually going to be counterproductive.
link |
So everyone needs to figure out for themselves,
link |
first of all, how often you're willing to do resistance
link |
exercise of any kind.
link |
And again, it doesn't matter if you're using bands
link |
or weights or body weight.
link |
For instance, if you're doing chin ups,
link |
chances are, unless you are very strong,
link |
that you're not using weights,
link |
you're just using something that you can hold onto.
link |
Or if you're doing pushups,
link |
some of you will be working in that 30 to 80%
link |
of your one repetition maximum range.
link |
It doesn't necessarily mean that you have to be
link |
moving weights in a gym, for instance.
link |
So the purpose here is to figure out
link |
what muscles you're trying to train.
link |
That's an issue that we'll talk about in a moment.
link |
And then it does appear that somewhere between
link |
five and 15 sets per week is going to be
link |
what's the thing that's going to work for most people.
link |
Now this is based on a tremendous amount of work
link |
that was done by Andy Galpin and colleagues,
link |
Brad Schoenfield and colleagues and others.
link |
Mike Roberts, there's a huge group
link |
of people out there doing exercise physiology
link |
and a small subset of them that are linking them
link |
back to real world protocols
link |
that don't just pertain to athletes.
link |
So that's mainly what I'm focusing on today.
link |
And surely there will be exceptions.
link |
Now, if you are going to divide the sets across the week,
link |
you're not going to do all 10 sets, for instance,
link |
for a given muscle group in one session,
link |
then of course it's imperative that the muscles
link |
recover in between sessions.
link |
And we are going to talk about recovery
link |
both at the systemic level, the whole nervous system
link |
and at the local level, the nerve to muscle
link |
and local even muscle level.
link |
We'll talk about that in about 10 minutes
link |
when we talk about recovery.
link |
I do want to mention something very important,
link |
which is that everything I'm referring to here,
link |
it has to do with full range of motion, okay?
link |
And you might ask, well, what about the speeds of movements?
link |
This is actually turns out to be
link |
a really interesting data set
link |
for generating explosiveness and speed.
link |
So for sprinters or throwing sports,
link |
or for people that want to generate a lot of jumping power,
link |
it does appear that learning to move weights
link |
as fast as you safely can,
link |
especially under moderate to heavy loads
link |
can increase explosiveness and speed.
link |
And most of that effect is from changes in the neurons.
link |
It's not from changes in the muscle,
link |
it's from changes in the way that the upper motor neurons
link |
communicate with the lower motor neurons
link |
and generating a pathway, a neural circuit, as we call it,
link |
that is very efficient at generating action potentials,
link |
which are the electricity within neurons
link |
to trigger the muscle.
link |
Now, of course, there are events that happen
link |
from nerve to muscle,
link |
but the takeaway from that enormous literature, frankly,
link |
is that if you want to get faster,
link |
yes, it can be beneficial to get stronger,
link |
but if you want to dedicate resistance training
link |
specifically to jumping higher, to running faster,
link |
to throwing further and these sorts of things,
link |
that learning to generate force with increasing speed
link |
is going to be beneficial.
link |
On the flip side of that,
link |
for people that want to get stronger,
link |
it appears that the slowing down of the weight
link |
as things get harder is a key parameter
link |
in recruiting those high threshold motor units.
link |
So let me phrase that a little bit differently.
link |
Think about a set in the gym
link |
or think about a set of pushups or a set of pull-ups.
link |
Initially, you can move very fast if you like.
link |
If you want to generate hypertrophy,
link |
the goal really is not necessarily to move super slow,
link |
but to isolate the muscle
link |
and therefore not to use momentum,
link |
rather than lift weights, as they say, challenge muscles.
link |
If you want to get stronger,
link |
you're going to be distributing that effort
link |
over more muscles and more of your nervous system.
link |
For generating explosiveness and speed,
link |
it's very clear that learning to generate forces quickly
link |
and to move heavy or moderately heavy loads quickly
link |
is going to be beneficial
link |
because of the way that you train the motor neurons.
link |
And of course, changes in the muscle.
link |
But this could look different for different sports.
link |
And obviously, you want to make safety paramount.
link |
If you're injured, you're not going to be able to train
link |
at all for sport or for any purpose that is.
link |
And so what this would involve
link |
is something like 60 to 75% of a one repetition maximum.
link |
And then in a controlled way,
link |
moving that as quickly as one can
link |
throughout the entire set.
link |
And certainly not going to failure
link |
because as you approach failure,
link |
the inability to move the weight with good form,
link |
the weight inevitably slows down.
link |
In fact, there are a lot of new technologies now
link |
that are focused on informing people
link |
of how quickly the bar or weight is moving.
link |
I saw an advertisement for this the other day.
link |
There are things that people can attach to bars
link |
that will literally speak to you as you're doing a set
link |
and inform you whether or not you're moving
link |
four times more slowly per rep
link |
than you were at the beginning
link |
and trying to hone in on the exact speed of movement.
link |
In talking to these experts prior to this episode,
link |
it does appear that for sake of hypertrophy,
link |
as long as you're not moving the muscle so quickly
link |
that you start to distribute the effort
link |
to lots of other muscles, it doesn't really matter.
link |
Because as the set gets harder,
link |
the motor units that you recruit will increase,
link |
the number of neurons that you recruit
link |
and the number of muscle fibers,
link |
in particular these high threshold muscle fibers
link |
And so it's really only for purposes of hypertrophy
link |
that you really need to be concerned
link |
about how quickly the weight is slowing down.
link |
However, if you're trying to get faster, more explosive
link |
and generate more speed and jumping power,
link |
throwing power, things of that sort,
link |
you never really want to use a weight
link |
or get to a portion of the set
link |
where you're moving the bar very, very slowly.
link |
And I'm sure as I say that,
link |
some of the exercise physiologists
link |
and advanced trainers out there
link |
will come after me with pitchforks, which is fine.
link |
I'd love to see the literature that shows
link |
that low gear, slow movements with very heavy weights
link |
can indeed improve explosiveness.
link |
And that may in fact be the case,
link |
but the data that I was able to access
link |
was essentially as I described just a moment ago.
link |
So as you're probably starting to realize,
link |
you need to customize a resistance practice
link |
for your particular needs and goals.
link |
And I certainly am not the first to suggest
link |
that people periodize their training,
link |
that they do things from anywhere
link |
from one month to six months and to see how it goes.
link |
And to make modifications as they go.
link |
Because the nervous system,
link |
in particular the neuromuscular system,
link |
changes very quickly at the beginning of training.
link |
In fact, some of the changes that one can see
link |
when they first embrace or start a resistance training
link |
can be very remarkable, but they tend to slow over time.
link |
So we've talked about a few principles.
link |
The fact that you need to get sufficient volume,
link |
you need at least five sets to maintain,
link |
and you probably need about 10 sets per muscle group
link |
in order to improve muscle.
link |
That moving weights of moderate to moderately heavy weight
link |
quickly is going to be best for explosiveness.
link |
That isolating muscles and really contracting muscles hard,
link |
something that you can test by just
link |
when you're outside the training session,
link |
seeing whether or not you can cramp the muscle hard,
link |
will really, will tell you your capacity
link |
to improve hypertrophy
link |
or to engage strength changes in that muscle.
link |
That your ability to contract a muscle hard
link |
is inversely related to the number of sets
link |
that you should do in order to isolate
link |
and stimulate that muscle.
link |
And there are some other things that can enhance
link |
the whole process of building nerve to muscle connections,
link |
making them more efficient and generating, if you like,
link |
more strength and hypertrophy.
link |
One of them, I loathe to say,
link |
I was told is in-between set contractions.
link |
The other name for this is the people in the gym,
link |
does typically seem to be guys in the gym
link |
flexing their muscles in-between sets.
link |
And indeed, the research supports the fact
link |
that contractions of about 30 seconds
link |
in-between the actual work sets,
link |
they're not going to favor better performance
link |
If anything, they're going to compromise them,
link |
but those hard contractions in-between sets
link |
for a variety of reasons related to local muscle metabolism,
link |
as well as what we talked about before,
link |
which are stress, tension, and damage,
link |
they seem to improve stress, tension, and damage
link |
and the nerve to muscle contraction
link |
in ways that facilitate hypertrophy.
link |
In other words, if you see that person flexing
link |
in-between sets in the gym,
link |
provided that they're really isolating that muscle
link |
and provided it's one that they ought to be improving,
link |
not one of these people that always skips leg day
link |
type of people, these people are highly asymmetric,
link |
although that's up to them,
link |
that process of flexing in-between sets
link |
does seem to improve the nerve to muscle connection
link |
and enhance hypertrophy.
link |
And I say I was loath to say it
link |
because nowadays with phones,
link |
it seems like the end of every set includes a selfie,
link |
and that's sort of like the 11th rep of every set.
link |
I like to joke, it seems like very few people are capable
link |
of actually going into the gym and doing a workout
link |
without taking a picture of themselves,
link |
which I think is fine if that's your thing.
link |
Although I must say that the athletes that I know,
link |
and even the recreational athletes that I know
link |
who seem to get the most out of their training
link |
and who also seem to get the most
link |
out of other aspects of their life
link |
seem to be able to control their phone behavior
link |
both in the gym and outside of the gym.
link |
But that's more of an editorial point there.
link |
In an earlier episode,
link |
I talked about estrogen and testosterone.
link |
And during that discussion,
link |
I talked about the use of resistance exercise
link |
specifically for increasing testosterone,
link |
both in men and in women.
link |
And indeed that is a powerful effect of resistance exercise.
link |
And indeed it's mediated by the nerve to muscle connections.
link |
We talked about that in that earlier episode.
link |
I just want to briefly mention that protocol
link |
since it's distinctly different
link |
from the other protocols I've talked about today.
link |
The protocols I've talked about today thus far
link |
of explosive movements or of hypertrophy based training
link |
provided the training is 60 minutes or less
link |
will cause increases in serum testosterone
link |
that's been shown over and over again.
link |
And if the session extends too long past 75 minutes
link |
and is of sufficiently high intensity,
link |
chances are testosterone levels will start to drop
link |
and cortisol levels will go up
link |
in ways that can be detrimental to recovery
link |
and the goals of the training.
link |
But that's different than training
link |
that's specifically geared toward increasing testosterone.
link |
Duncan French, who's one of the directors
link |
of the UFC Performance Center,
link |
when he was a graduate student
link |
at University of Connecticut stores did some beautiful work.
link |
He and his colleagues found the ideal training protocols
link |
for stimulating testosterone release,
link |
which is something that many people want to do
link |
for a variety of reasons.
link |
And that involved doing six sets of 10 repetitions
link |
even if it requires lightening the weight
link |
on one set to the next with about two minutes,
link |
120 seconds rest in between sets,
link |
which if you think about it is pretty short rest
link |
and is pretty darn hard work.
link |
Now what's interesting
link |
is that there's a very limited threshold
link |
for increasing testosterone.
link |
That protocol of six sets of 10 repetitions
link |
led to these big increases in serum testosterone.
link |
But if people did 10 sets of 10,
link |
so just four more repetitions per set,
link |
then testosterone did not increase.
link |
In fact, you got more
link |
of this catabolic cortisol-like pathway.
link |
You get other benefits
link |
from the so-called 10 sets of 10 protocol,
link |
but not the testosterone increase
link |
and maybe even reductions in testosterone.
link |
Now it's important to point out
link |
that that six sets of 10 was done
link |
with big compound movements.
link |
So things like squats or deadlifts or chin ups
link |
or things of that sort.
link |
And those were done as single sessions,
link |
not in concert with a bunch of other exercise.
link |
Although if athletes are doing that,
link |
there's no reason why they couldn't also do
link |
other types of training elsewhere in the week.
link |
I asked Duncan about this
link |
and he mentioned that that done twice a week
link |
is probably the maximum amount that anyone could do that
link |
and still maintain this increase in testosterone.
link |
It's a very interesting protocol
link |
because as a neuroscientist,
link |
it's amazing to me that six sets of 10 repetitions
link |
with something causes a distinctly, excuse me,
link |
causes a distinctly different result
link |
in terms of hormone output
link |
than 10 sets of 10 of the exact same movement.
link |
And it speaks to the exquisite way
link |
in which nerve to muscle connections
link |
dictate the whole physiology of your entire system.
link |
If there's a theme that I really want to bring forward today
link |
is that weight training or resistance training of any kind
link |
is really used for either systemic effects, right?
link |
10% of training done where you're feeling that burn
link |
which means lactate will be present
link |
and sending signals to your brain
link |
and to your heart and to your liver that are beneficial
link |
or isolating muscles which may also generate
link |
a kind of a lactate
link |
or which is associated with the burn result
link |
but that isolation of muscles is distinctly different.
link |
So systemic versus isolated.
link |
Those are the two general ways
link |
in which resistance training can be applied.
link |
So I just wanted to mention that earlier protocol
link |
because it's well supported by the literature.
link |
If you were to incorporate that protocol, you might ask,
link |
well then can you do any other weight training
link |
Sure, of course you can provided you're recovering.
link |
So let's talk about how you know if you're recovering,
link |
how you know if a muscle is recovered
link |
and how you know if your whole system is recovered
link |
because recovery is what dictates whether or not
link |
you can come back and do more work of a different kind.
link |
Meaning, I don't know, you do leg training one day,
link |
can you and should you come back
link |
and do upper body training the next day?
link |
And it dictates whether or not you'll see any improvement
link |
from session to session at all.
link |
Before I talk about recovery,
link |
I just want to make sure I nail down the details
link |
that I was able to extract from the literature
link |
and from my conversation with Dr. Galpin.
link |
If you're wondering how quickly to perform repetitions
link |
for sake of hypertrophy or strength gains,
link |
anywhere from a half a second per repetition,
link |
all the way up to eight seconds per repetition,
link |
it doesn't seem to matter.
link |
Again, if you're thinking about explosiveness
link |
or building speed,
link |
or you're specifically using resistance training
link |
to build endurance, that's a separate matter.
link |
We talked about explosiveness and speed,
link |
I'll talk about endurance in a few moments.
link |
We also talked about in-between set contractions,
link |
the so-called selfie effect of people flexing
link |
a particular muscle,
link |
isolating a particular muscle between sets.
link |
Just want to mention that would be a terrible thing to do
link |
if your goal is performance on sets.
link |
So moving a particular amount of weight,
link |
that's actually going to diminish the amount of weight
link |
that you can move, it's going to enhance muscle growth
link |
and it's going to enhance the nerve to muscle isolation
link |
of that particular pathway.
link |
So again, that flexing between sets
link |
is going to favor hypertrophy, not performance.
link |
If you're trying to get stronger,
link |
you're trying to move more weights,
link |
you're trying to distribute work
link |
and you're trying to do maybe skill training
link |
with resistance, then flexing between sets
link |
is absolutely the wrong thing to do for obvious reasons,
link |
you're fatiguing the muscle further.
link |
Just remaining still or walking around a little bit
link |
has been shown to be beneficial
link |
in terms of moving some of the lactate out of the muscle,
link |
as well as just recovering between sets.
link |
Now, how long to recover between sets?
link |
There's a question for the testosterone protocol,
link |
Duncan French and colleagues found
link |
that it was about two minutes,
link |
keeping that really on the clock, two minutes, not longer.
link |
For hypertrophy and for strength gains,
link |
it does seem that resting anywhere from two minutes
link |
or even three or four, even five or six minutes
link |
can be beneficial.
link |
And if you're interested in expanding the volume of work
link |
that you can do in a given session,
link |
at high capacity, at high intensity with a given weight,
link |
please see the episode that I did on cold and performance
link |
about supercharging performance,
link |
which is based on the work of my colleague, Craig Heller
link |
in the biology department at Stanford,
link |
which talks about palmer cooling,
link |
about how you can cool the core of the body
link |
best through the palms
link |
using these particular venous portals
link |
that are only present in your hands.
link |
People are now doing this with ice packs or with gel packs,
link |
there are a number of different ways one can do this,
link |
I talk all about that in that episode,
link |
it allows you to do more repetitions and more work
link |
at a given weight over time.
link |
So rather than getting 10 repetitions
link |
and then eight and then seven and then six
link |
through proper use of palmer cooling,
link |
one can do 10, 10, 10, 10, and even add sets.
link |
And that's one way that one can accomplish
link |
higher volume work
link |
without having to drop the weight considerably.
link |
So that's where you can hit that really sweet spot
link |
if that's your goal of getting strong
link |
and generating some hypertrophy.
link |
Because as soon as you have to drop to lighter weights,
link |
then you're shifting more towards hypertrophy and endurance
link |
and less toward strength in a given muscle.
link |
So check out that episode.
link |
The last thing besides between set contractions
link |
and whether or not you're distributing work
link |
or whether or not you're really trying to isolate muscles
link |
is this notion of pre-exhausting muscles.
link |
It's been shown over and over again
link |
that for instance,
link |
if you want to generate force in a given muscle
link |
and really isolate that,
link |
doing the isolation work before a compound movement.
link |
So this would be leg extensions,
link |
the thing where you sit
link |
and you extend your toes up toward the ceiling,
link |
leg extensions before squats will allow the squats
link |
to target that muscle group more effectively.
link |
And that makes perfectly good sense
link |
based on the Henneman size principle
link |
and fatiguing motor units.
link |
It should be obvious why that's the case.
link |
But of course that's going to be anti-performance
link |
in terms of how much weight you can lift
link |
and maybe even the form that you can maintain
link |
when you move to the bigger compound movement.
link |
So you really have to ask yourself a number of questions.
link |
How good are you at isolating a given muscle?
link |
Therefore, how many sets do you want to do?
link |
How often are you willing to train?
link |
Therefore, how many sets are you going to do
link |
in a given session
link |
versus how many are you going to distribute across the week?
link |
Are you aiming for performance?
link |
Are you going to distribute that work
link |
across the nervous system and musculature?
link |
Are you trying to move weights?
link |
Are you trying to challenge muscles?
link |
If you're trying to challenge muscles,
link |
then you really want to focus on things
link |
like this pre-exhausting,
link |
the isolation of a muscle before the compound movement.
link |
Your performance on compound movements
link |
will absolutely suffer,
link |
but your ability to isolate that muscle
link |
and generate hypertrophy
link |
through the accumulation of larger myosin,
link |
those bigger balloons, will benefit.
link |
And once again, if you're trying to get faster,
link |
then the speed of the movement really matters.
link |
So how do we know if we've recovered?
link |
How can we test recovery?
link |
And this is not just recovery from resistance training.
link |
This is recovery from running,
link |
recovery from swimming.
link |
Up until now, I've been talking about resistance training
link |
more or less in a vacuum.
link |
I haven't even touched on the fact
link |
that many people are running
link |
and they're doing resistance training,
link |
or they're swimming and they're doing resistance training.
link |
It's not simply the case that if a given muscle is fatigued,
link |
you can just work other muscles
link |
because even if you've beautifully isolated a muscle,
link |
let's say you have incredible abilities
link |
to isolate just your quadriceps, for instance,
link |
and you do a workout where you isolate your quadriceps,
link |
you do your six sets of intense work,
link |
or maybe use Palmer cooling
link |
and you're able to do 12 sets of intense work,
link |
and you're done, and that muscle group the next day
link |
is certainly not going to be recovered
link |
unless you're somebody who's extraordinary at recovery
link |
or you're enhancing your recovery through chemical means,
link |
which we'll talk about at the end.
link |
Well, you can assess systemic recovery,
link |
meaning your nervous system
link |
and your nervous system's ability to generate force
link |
both distributed and isolated through three main tests.
link |
And fortunately, these tests are very simple
link |
and two of them are essentially zero costs
link |
require no equipment.
link |
HRV, heart rate variability,
link |
has made its way finally
link |
into the forefront of exercise physiology
link |
and even into the popular discussion.
link |
I've talked about HRV before,
link |
how when we exhale our heart rate slows down
link |
because of the way that our diaphragm
link |
is connected to our heart and to our brain
link |
and the way our brain is connected to our heart.
link |
When we inhale, our heart rate speeds up
link |
and that is the basis of heart rate variability.
link |
Heart rate variability is good.
link |
It means that you're breathing properly.
link |
And when I say it's good,
link |
it means you want a lot of heart rate variability.
link |
You don't want a heart rate
link |
that is high or low consistently over time.
link |
That might come as a bit of a surprise
link |
for you endurance athletes
link |
who probably are trying to accomplish
link |
your endurance work at a steady cadence
link |
and really hit that nice sweet spot
link |
where you're breathing rhythmically,
link |
your heart rate's going rhythmically,
link |
you're in that steady heart rate
link |
and then away from exercise,
link |
you have a nice low heart rate as they say.
link |
Well, nice low heart rate
link |
isn't necessarily always so nice.
link |
Turns out that introducing bouts
link |
of increasing your heart rate during exercise
link |
and even through your waking day,
link |
through stressful events even is provided there brief
link |
A good nerve to heart system
link |
benefits from being able to increase heart rate
link |
and decrease heart rate.
link |
Heart rate variability is good.
link |
So you don't want high heart rate,
link |
you don't want low heart rate all the time.
link |
But heart rate variability
link |
is difficult for a lot of people to measure.
link |
There are some devices that will allow you to do that,
link |
various watches and devices.
link |
There are more devices becoming available all the time.
link |
Hopefully soon some that are integrated with your phone
link |
that involve no contact or anything on your body.
link |
But those do carry some costs
link |
and they are not perfect yet.
link |
The measures of heart rate variability
link |
that one can use while in movement
link |
are still in that phase I would say
link |
of technology development where everyone isn't using them.
link |
Let's leave it at that.
link |
There are two measures however,
link |
whether or not you recovered
link |
that you can use first thing in the morning
link |
maybe after five, 10 minutes if you like,
link |
but ideally right when you wake up
link |
in order to assess how well recovered you are
link |
and therefore whether or not you should train
link |
your whole system at all that day.
link |
The first one is grip strength.
link |
Grip strength, the ability to generate force
link |
at the level of squeezing the fist
link |
or squeezing down on something
link |
might seem like kind of a trivial way to assess recovery
link |
but it's not because it relates to your ability
link |
to use your upper motor neurons
link |
to control your lower motor neurons
link |
and to generate isolated force.
link |
And so that's really what you're assessing when you do that.
link |
Some people will use one of these grip tools
link |
or there's a Costello has this toy
link |
that's shaped like a donut and it's this hard rubber.
link |
And I've tried this before,
link |
if I've been working really hard, not sleeping very well
link |
or I've been training a lot,
link |
any one or combination of those things, my grip suffers.
link |
I can't actually squeeze that thing down
link |
Costello because he was born with like a 24 inch neck
link |
and even though he's never touched a weight,
link |
somehow he can just clamp down on that thing
link |
and he can turn it into a pancake with ease
link |
and he likes to chuckle while I struggle with this thing.
link |
But on a good day, I can squeeze this thing
link |
so that I eliminate the hole in the donut, so to speak.
link |
You can also take a floor weight and, excuse me,
link |
a floor scale and squeeze the scale
link |
and see how much force you can generate.
link |
I would do that as a baseline to establish
link |
what you can do when you're well rested.
link |
And then if you do that in the morning,
link |
you can see whether or not you're able
link |
to generate the same amount of force
link |
or you could use the rubber donut or something.
link |
A lot of this is very subjective.
link |
With the scale, you're really trying to assess
link |
whether or not you can generate the same amount of force.
link |
If you start seeing a 10% or 20% certainly reduction in that,
link |
that's concerning.
link |
It means that your system, your nervous system as a whole,
link |
it's not necessarily fatigued.
link |
It's that the pathways from nerve to muscle
link |
are still in the process of rewiring themselves
link |
in order to generate force.
link |
And you might think, well, I trained one muscle group one day
link |
why am I having a hard time doing this
link |
for a completely different muscle group?
link |
Doesn't make any sense.
link |
But there's something about the upper motor neuron
link |
to lower motor neuron pathway generally
link |
that allows you to use something like grip strength
link |
as a kind of a thermometer, if you will,
link |
of your ability to recover.
link |
So look for your ability to generate force in grip
link |
when you first wake up.
link |
It's not going to be as good as it is at 3 p.m.
link |
after a cup of coffee and a couple meals,
link |
but the point isn't performance overall.
link |
The point is to assess whether or not
link |
you're getting better, worse, or the same from day to day.
link |
The other one that's really terrific
link |
and that Andy Galpin's group is using,
link |
and I'm delighted about this
link |
because it relates to something
link |
that my lab is very excited about as well,
link |
is carbon dioxide tolerance.
link |
So this is a really interesting tool
link |
that endurance athletes, strength athletes,
link |
I think can all benefit from.
link |
In fact, athletes and people of all kinds,
link |
even if you're not an athlete,
link |
even if you're not exercising at all,
link |
there's a good question of whether or not
link |
your system as a whole is doing okay or not.
link |
We rely on the thermometer.
link |
Do we have a fever or not?
link |
We rely on subjective things.
link |
Do I feel good or not?
link |
Am I digesting well or not?
link |
Those are all subjective.
link |
The carbon dioxide tolerance test is its objective
link |
in that it measures your capacity to engage
link |
the so-called parasympathetic arm of your nervous system,
link |
which is the calming aspect of your nervous system,
link |
and it measures your ability to consciously control
link |
a particular skeletal muscle, which is your diaphragm.
link |
So here's how you do the carbon dioxide tolerance test.
link |
You wake up in the morning.
link |
If you have to use the restroom first, do that,
link |
but try and stay away from your phone.
link |
If you have your phone, put it on airplane mode,
link |
go to the timer or use a hand watch
link |
or some other way of measuring time.
link |
Stay off social media for just a few seconds.
link |
And what you're going to do is you're going to inhale
link |
through your nose as deeply as you can.
link |
You can do this lying down, sitting, whatever.
link |
Inhale through your nose and then exhale all the way.
link |
You're going to repeat that four times, okay?
link |
So inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale,
link |
inhale, exhale, four times.
link |
And ideally you're inhaling through the nose
link |
and you're exhaling through the mouth.
link |
That's just the beginning
link |
of this carbon dioxide tolerance test.
link |
Then you take a fifth inhale as deep as you can
link |
through your nose, fill your lungs as much as you can.
link |
And if you can try and expand your,
link |
make your stomach go out while you do that,
link |
that means that your diaphragm is really engaged.
link |
So you're inhaling as much as you possibly can.
link |
Then hit the timer and your goal is to release that air
link |
as slowly as possible through your mouth.
link |
So it looks like you have a tiny, tiny little straw
link |
in your mouth and you're letting it go
link |
as slowly as you possibly can.
link |
Measure what we call the carbon dioxide blow off time
link |
I know you can all sit with lungs empty
link |
after you eliminate all that air, but don't lie to yourself.
link |
Don't stop the timer when you've been sitting
link |
with your lungs empty for a while,
link |
stop the timer when you are finally no longer able
link |
to exhale any more air.
link |
So you do inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale,
link |
inhale, exhale slowly.
link |
I just said it quickly for sake of time.
link |
Then you do this fifth big inhale through your mouth
link |
and I'm not going to do it for the full duration.
link |
And then you're measuring that time.
link |
Your carbon dioxide discard rate will be somewhere
link |
between one second and presumably two minutes.
link |
Two minutes would be a heroic carbon dioxide discard time.
link |
30 seconds would be more typical.
link |
20 seconds would be fast.
link |
If your carbon dioxide discard time is 20
link |
or 25 seconds or less,
link |
you are not necessarily recovered
link |
from your previous day's activities.
link |
There's ways to push through this,
link |
but hold onto that thought for a moment.
link |
If your carbon dioxide discard time is somewhere
link |
between about 30 seconds and 60 seconds,
link |
you are in what we would call kind of the green zone
link |
where you are in a position to do more physical work.
link |
And if your carbon dioxide discard time is somewhere
link |
between 65 and 120 seconds,
link |
well then you have almost certainly
link |
recovered your nervous system.
link |
I'm not talking about the individual muscles,
link |
but your nervous system is prepared to do more work.
link |
And Andy's lab has great data on this
link |
as it relates to exercise physiology.
link |
I think that story should be out
link |
in the not too distant future.
link |
My lab has been using carbon dioxide discard time
link |
to look at anxiety and recovery from bouts of anxiety.
link |
So two totally independent projects,
link |
but using the same measure.
link |
So you've got HRV, which requires some technology usually.
link |
You've got grip strength,
link |
which you can assess subjectively
link |
or you can use a floor scale.
link |
And now you have carbon dioxide tolerance.
link |
You want to do this in the morning when you wake up
link |
and keep track, just write down in a little book
link |
or maybe just keep track in your mind
link |
of your carbon dioxide discard time.
link |
If you find that your discard times are dropping,
link |
even if they're in the 40 second range or 50 second range,
link |
but normally you can do 75 seconds or 120 seconds.
link |
If they're starting to drop by anywhere from 15 to 20%,
link |
you're veering in the direction of not recovering.
link |
And I'm really keen on this tool
link |
because everybody has different recovery abilities.
link |
Some people are eating really well and sleeping really well.
link |
Some people have minimal stress
link |
or can buffer stress really well.
link |
Other people, they dissolve into a puddle of tears
link |
if they read one text message that's troubling or whatever.
link |
And I realize, and I say that with sympathy,
link |
I realize people have varying levels
link |
of stress and demand in their life.
link |
It's just impossible to prescribe an entire protocol
link |
that says, okay, yes, you should train today
link |
and this is exactly what you should do.
link |
No, you shouldn't.
link |
Use carbon dioxide discard rate
link |
because A, it's valuable, it's informative.
link |
B, it's zero cost.
link |
And C, it's something that you can track
link |
objectively over time.
link |
And that's really the key.
link |
And I just should, I'd be remiss if I didn't say
link |
that what carbon dioxide discard rate is tapping into
link |
is your ability to mechanically control your diaphragm.
link |
Certainly that's one aspect of it,
link |
but that relates in a very direct way to your ability
link |
to put the brake on your stress system,
link |
to engage the so-called parasympathetic
link |
or calming arm of your autonomic nervous system.
link |
And another thing that Andy Galpin's group is testing
link |
is at the offset of training, after your run,
link |
after your weight training session,
link |
maybe even after your plyometrics session,
link |
we didn't really talk about jumping and throwing
link |
and that sort of thing.
link |
Maybe we'll talk about it in a future episode.
link |
But they and other groups, including some elite athletes
link |
and other groups that are very interested
link |
in physical performance are using a tool
link |
where they deliberately disengage for five minutes
link |
at the end of training.
link |
They deliberately engage this calming
link |
or parasympathetic arm of the nervous system.
link |
And you can do that through any number of different tools.
link |
I'm a big fan of respiration tools
link |
because they're always available to you.
link |
Your breathing is always there.
link |
I talk about some of these tools in previous episodes,
link |
but you could use things like non-sleep deep rest and SDR
link |
at the end of a training session.
link |
You could do 10 physiological size,
link |
double inhales through the nose, followed by long exhales.
link |
That will definitely engage
link |
the parasympathetic nervous system at the end of training.
link |
So rather than finish your training session
link |
and then just hop onto your phone, serious athletes
link |
and people who are serious about recovery,
link |
initiate that recovery at the very end of their training.
link |
And they start to kickstart that recovery process rather.
link |
And they measure CO2 tolerance in the morning.
link |
So there are several groups that are doing that.
link |
In fact, I know several groups because I'm working with them
link |
that are using physiological size between sets
link |
in order to recover their nervous system
link |
and maintain nerve to muscle contractibility,
link |
maintain focus throughout their training session,
link |
enhance their focus by doing a few physiological size.
link |
So double inhale, exhale in between sets.
link |
So they're getting very focused and very intense
link |
about their strength work or explosiveness work
link |
or muscle isolation work during their sets.
link |
And then in between sets,
link |
they're deliberately disengaging the nervous system
link |
and then they're re-engaging it again.
link |
So I just wanted to emphasize that.
link |
So recovery is a complex process.
link |
It's got a lot of things,
link |
but the CO2 tolerance set should be a valuable tool.
link |
Now, another tool for recovery
link |
that people are very excited about
link |
is the use of cold and the ice bath.
link |
And this is important.
link |
If you are somebody who uses cold through cold shower
link |
or ice bath or jumping in a lake or a river,
link |
whatever it is that you use to generate cold
link |
as a recovery tool, you should be aware
link |
that there are data starting to emerge
link |
that if your goal is recovery or strength improvements,
link |
using cold within the four hours following a workout,
link |
I'm not talking about polymer cooling,
link |
I'm talking about whole body cooling
link |
or cooling from the neck down.
link |
Yes, it will reduce inflammation.
link |
Yes, it will reduce the amount
link |
of delayed onset muscle soreness.
link |
One readout of how intense or damaging a given workout was,
link |
not the only readout,
link |
but it does seem to interfere with some of the things
link |
like mTOR pathways,
link |
the mammalian targeted rapamycin pathway
link |
and other pathways related to inflammation
link |
that promote muscle repair, remember, and muscle growth.
link |
Remember, stress, tension and damage
link |
are the stimulus for nerve to muscle connections to change
link |
and for muscles to get bigger, stronger and better.
link |
And so if you're getting into the ice bath after training
link |
or taking a really cold shower
link |
after doing resistance training,
link |
you are likely short circuiting the improvements
link |
that you're trying to create.
link |
Now, athletes who are trying to recover quickly
link |
so that they can get back into more training sessions,
link |
or let's say you're somebody who doesn't really want
link |
to gain much strength or hypertrophy,
link |
and you're mainly focused on endurance
link |
and you want to do more endurance work
link |
and you've been weight training,
link |
well, then exposing yourself to cold can be beneficial,
link |
but you're not going to get as great of benefits
link |
from the resistance training.
link |
In other words, cold after resistance training
link |
seems to short circuit some of the benefits
link |
of that resistance training.
link |
There are some other things that can short circuit
link |
the benefits of resistance training as well.
link |
One of those is antihistamines.
link |
Some interesting data were published recently,
link |
I believe it was in Scientific Reports, yes,
link |
that showed that antihistamines can prevent
link |
some of the benefits of cardiovascular exercise,
link |
of endurance type work, so running, swimming,
link |
fairly long duration, or even sprint type work,
link |
as well as inhibit some of the processes
link |
associated with resistance training.
link |
Remember, resistance training or endurance training,
link |
that's a stimulus for stress,
link |
and the adaptation to that stress is how you get better,
link |
that you can run further, faster, lift more weight,
link |
hypertrophy the muscle, et cetera.
link |
So antihistamines can be a problem.
link |
Obviously, don't compromise your ability
link |
to breathe completely, but antihistamines generally work
link |
by blocking what are called mast cells, M-A-S-T.
link |
Mast cells are really interesting cells
link |
that we'll talk about in our month on neuroimmune function.
link |
They travel in the bloodstream,
link |
and they're these little packets that burst open
link |
at sites of inflammation.
link |
Muscle damage and inflammation is a signal
link |
that something needs to change,
link |
and so taking antihistamines, it appears,
link |
can disrupt some of that inflammatory process.
link |
So you actually want inflammation
link |
during and immediately after a workout,
link |
then you want to bring inflammation down later,
link |
and I'll mention how to do that.
link |
The other thing are non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs.
link |
You know their trade names.
link |
These are painkillers that many people take.
link |
Those, as I've mentioned in a previous episode,
link |
can interfere with the benefits of endurance training
link |
and the benefits of resistance training.
link |
In addition to that, they block pain signals,
link |
and pain is a very good signal
link |
that you might be doing something wrong,
link |
and so while nobody likes to be in pain,
link |
I suppose there are probably a few people out there
link |
like to be in pain, but that's a different story,
link |
but nobody likes to be in pain,
link |
the non-steroid anti-inflammatories,
link |
the NSAIDs as they're called,
link |
and the antihistamines seem to prevent a lot of the gains,
link |
the improvements in endurance strength and size
link |
that people are specifically using exercise for.
link |
So be cautious about your use
link |
of non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs,
link |
especially within the four hours preceding
link |
or the four hours following exercise.
link |
So I hope you're starting to get the picture.
link |
In order to change the nerve to muscle connectivity
link |
in ways that will better serve you,
link |
you need a stressor during the actual training,
link |
which particular stressor depends on your training goals,
link |
but that stressor is almost always going to be associated
link |
with inflammation, and then after the training,
link |
you want to try and get
link |
into a state of reduced inflammation,
link |
and that's why you would do some sort of protocol,
link |
non-sleep deep rest, which we will link to in our caption,
link |
or perhaps you would use the hypnosis app
link |
that we've talked about before, reveri, R-E-V-E-R-I.com.
link |
There's a great app for accessing deep rest states
link |
or the physiological side to try and get the system,
link |
your system, to calm down after training.
link |
There are also tools that one can use to reduce inflammation
link |
at a kind of foundational level away from training,
link |
and these are tools that I've talked
link |
about many times before, but I'll just restate them again.
link |
The kind of golden three, according to Andy Galpin
link |
and the ones that he recommends are sufficient omega-3s.
link |
Again, that can be accomplished through diet,
link |
through whole food intake,
link |
or through supplementation, or both.
link |
So in general, getting above 1,000 milligrams
link |
of EPA per day to keep inflammation low or relatively low,
link |
vitamin D, and in some cases, magnesium malate.
link |
Magnesium malate seems to be particularly effective
link |
in offsetting delayed onset muscle soreness.
link |
Soreness itself is not required
link |
for improvements in strength, improvements in explosiveness,
link |
improvements in hypertrophy.
link |
Now, if you do experience delayed onset muscle soreness,
link |
chances are you stressed that particular muscle pretty well,
link |
or even maybe too well.
link |
Maybe you stressed it too much and you need longer recovery.
link |
There's a total debate out there
link |
about whether or not you should train again
link |
when a muscle is still sore.
link |
I think the general takeaway is no,
link |
that means it's not recovered.
link |
And there are things, of course, like massage,
link |
like fascial release and things of that sort,
link |
sauna, cold, that can perhaps accelerate the movement
link |
from soreness to not sore.
link |
But in general, the omega-3 vitamin D
link |
and magnesium malate, excuse me,
link |
trio seem to be an effective way to reduce inflammation
link |
at kind of a systemic level.
link |
But remember, you want inflammation
link |
provided you're not damaging the muscle so much
link |
that you're injured during the training session
link |
because that's the stimulus for change in those muscles.
link |
I want to talk about a few other things
link |
that support the process of nerve to muscle communication
link |
and touch on some of the things
link |
that a lot of people are doing
link |
to try and quote unquote enhance their workouts
link |
and evaluate whether or not those are, in fact,
link |
enhancing workouts or not because weight training,
link |
unlike a lot of other forms of exercise,
link |
has a unique aspect to it,
link |
which is this feature that I guess some people call it
link |
the pump, which is the fact that blood goes into the muscle
link |
It's the only kind of training
link |
where you actually get a window into what the result
link |
might actually look like
link |
before you actually accomplish that result.
link |
So if you think about when you go out for a hard run
link |
and let's say you go out for a two mile run,
link |
let's say your goal is to break,
link |
you want to do a sub 10 two mile.
link |
Actually, when I went to university,
link |
I was running cross country my senior year of high school,
link |
and I wanted to walk on for the cross country team.
link |
And so I went out there
link |
and it turned out you had to do a sub 10 two mile.
link |
And I think the best mile I ever ran in high school
link |
was a 457, which isn't terrible.
link |
I can't do that now.
link |
It's not even close to what high school athletes,
link |
the best high school athletes can do now,
link |
but that would have meant doing it back to back.
link |
So sub 10 minute two mile, they even come close.
link |
I told Costello this story the other day
link |
and he just kind of laughed at me.
link |
He was like, why would you even want to run two miles?
link |
Because Costello is built almost exclusively
link |
of these type two fast twitch muscles
link |
that are designed for moving objects.
link |
He's incredibly strong.
link |
He has been since he was a puppy.
link |
I mean, that dog could probably drag a tractor
link |
if he wanted to, but he can't really go far.
link |
Whereas a greyhound or a whippet
link |
or some of these other site hounds or scent hounds
link |
They have a higher percentage
link |
of the so-called slow twitch muscle fibers.
link |
They are much better at endurance.
link |
So a sub 10 two mile would have been very, very challenging.
link |
No chance I could have done that.
link |
I don't think even with a lot of training,
link |
but let's say that you want to improve your performance
link |
in a given type of exercise.
link |
Let's talk about some of the things that seem to work
link |
across the board to improve strength, improve hypertrophy,
link |
and improve nerve to muscle communication and performance.
link |
The first thing that's absolutely key
link |
for nerve to muscle communication
link |
and physical performance of any kind,
link |
might not sound that exciting to you,
link |
but it is very exciting, and that's salt.
link |
Nerves, nerve cells, neurons communicate with each other
link |
and communicate with muscle by electricity,
link |
but that electricity is generated by particular ions
link |
moving into and out of the neuron.
link |
And the rushing in of a particular ion, sodium, salt,
link |
is what allows nerve cells to fire.
link |
If you don't have enough salt in your system,
link |
your neurons and your brain
link |
and your nerve to muscle communication will be terrible.
link |
If you have sufficient salt, it will be excellent.
link |
How much salt will depend on how much water you're drinking,
link |
how much caffeine you're drinking,
link |
and how much food you're ingesting.
link |
So, and whether or not you're taking any diuretics,
link |
how hot it is, et cetera, how much you're sweating.
link |
So you want to make sure that you have enough salt,
link |
potassium, and magnesium in your system
link |
if you want to perform well.
link |
I realize that salt isn't a very glamorous performance tool,
link |
It is absolutely vital.
link |
And the endurance athletes
link |
and the people that train in high heat
link |
can speak to the fact that when your electrolytes are low,
link |
your brain doesn't function,
link |
your body doesn't function nearly as well.
link |
In fact, even for mental work,
link |
for studying and for writing and for doing math and coding,
link |
doing analytic work of any kind,
link |
even a hard conversation that's important to you,
link |
having sufficient electrolytes is really going to help
link |
and being low on electrolytes won't help.
link |
And just drinking water won't help
link |
because you need electrolytes.
link |
The other thing that's been shown over and over again,
link |
numerous well-controlled studies
link |
to improve muscle performance is creatine.
link |
Early on, there was a lot of controversy about creatine,
link |
but there are many studies.
link |
If you want, you can go to this website
link |
that everyone now knows I love,
link |
which is this free website, examine.com,
link |
that there are no fewer than 18 studies there, 66 studies.
link |
So 18 studies supporting that muscle creatine content
link |
can be increased by ingesting creatine.
link |
How much creatine?
link |
Well, I asked the experts and they tell me
link |
that for somebody who's about 180 pounds,
link |
five grams a day should be sufficient or so.
link |
Heavier than 180, so if you've got like,
link |
if you're a 220-pound or 230-pound person,
link |
10 to 15 grams of creatine,
link |
people lighter than 180 pounds,
link |
maybe three to five grams of protein,
link |
excuse me, creatine, or even one to three grams.
link |
Creatine is a fuel source for early in bouts of activity,
link |
for high-intensity activity.
link |
It is also a fuel source for neurons in the brain
link |
and it can have some cognitive-enhancing effects.
link |
So creatine is a very interesting molecule.
link |
Early on, when it was released as a supplement,
link |
it was thought that you had to load it
link |
in higher dosages for a few days
link |
and then maintain it at lower dosages.
link |
So you'd take 20 or 30 grams a day,
link |
then back off to five or 10.
link |
It doesn't seem to be the case
link |
that you can get all the benefits
link |
from taking the dosages at the low level.
link |
I just mentioned a few moments ago
link |
as they relate to body weight throughout.
link |
So salt and electrolytes, absolutely key.
link |
You need those present.
link |
You need to be well-hydrated.
link |
Creatine seems to have a performance-enhancing effect.
link |
There are 66 studies, 66,
link |
showing that power output is greatly increased,
link |
anywhere from 12 to 20%.
link |
And this is sprinting and running and jumping
link |
as well as weightlifting by creatine.
link |
The ability to hydrate your body is improved by creatine
link |
because of the way that it brings more water
link |
into cells of various kinds.
link |
As an indirect effect, it can help increase lean mass
link |
because of the way that it brings more water into muscle
link |
and probably also because of the way
link |
that if you get stronger, you can generate more force
link |
and generate more hypertrophy.
link |
It reduces fatigue.
link |
Seven studies have shown that it reduces fatigue.
link |
There are even some interesting effects
link |
on improving cognition after traumatic brain injury.
link |
Although that's a serious medical condition in situations,
link |
you absolutely should talk to a board-certified physician
link |
before adding anything or taking anything
link |
out of your current regimen.
link |
There are a few other effects
link |
that are interesting and notable,
link |
but the big ones are the ones that I referred to before
link |
about increased power output, et cetera.
link |
And I just want to emphasize
link |
that creatine can increase this hormone
link |
that we talked about in the testosterone episode,
link |
dihydrotestosterone, which is testosterone
link |
converted by 5-alpha reductase into dihydrotestosterone.
link |
It's the more dominant androgen in humans,
link |
leads to increases in strength and libido and so forth.
link |
It also can increase male pattern baldness.
link |
Some people, not everybody,
link |
experience some hair loss with creatine.
link |
Other people don't.
link |
Some people experience accelerated beard growth
link |
because basically DHE has the opposite effect
link |
on hair follicles on the face as it does on the scalp.
link |
Some people don't.
link |
Women who ingest creatine,
link |
there are essentially no data showing
link |
that it increases hair loss or facial hair growth,
link |
but of course everyone is different.
link |
So you can go to examine.com.
link |
You can explore those studies.
link |
So creatine definitely a powerful
link |
performance enhancing molecule.
link |
The other one, one that personally I've never tried,
link |
but that seems to have a very strong
link |
and well-supported effects is beta-alanine.
link |
Now, beta-alanine is interesting
link |
because when you hear about weight training,
link |
you think about heavy deadlifts and bench presses,
link |
all that kind of stuff that people are doing,
link |
but beta-alanine seems to support exercises
link |
that is of slightly longer duration.
link |
So a mix of anaerobic and aerobic type movement.
link |
So things, these are physical performance
link |
in the 60 to 240 second range.
link |
So you can use your mind and kind of figure out
link |
like things that weights of the,
link |
that limit you to eight to 15 repetitions.
link |
Cardiovascular exercise of the sort like rowing or sprinting.
link |
So interval work, it seems to help with that kind of work.
link |
So we're not talking about long runs.
link |
We're not talking about heavy deadlifts.
link |
The standard dose is somewhere between two and five grams.
link |
Again, as always check with a doctor,
link |
make sure these things are safe for you.
link |
I'm not responsible for your health.
link |
You are, I don't say that just to protect me.
link |
I'd say that also to protect you,
link |
but it really seems to improve muscular endurance,
link |
improve anaerobic running capacity, reduce fatigue.
link |
There are even some interesting effects
link |
on reduction of body fat and improvements in lean mass.
link |
So creatine, beta-alanine, electrolytes,
link |
these are kind of the core three things
link |
that seem to improve performance and are well supported
link |
by the scientific literature.
link |
And in the earlier episode on supercharging performance,
link |
we talked about palmar cooling.
link |
That's certainly a performance enhancing tool.
link |
It's nothing you ingest.
link |
You're cooling your palms in a very specific way.
link |
That's very powerful.
link |
Now, what about for longer duration bouts of exercise?
link |
We've mainly been focusing on resistance training,
link |
but what about for long runs, long swims,
link |
these kinds of things?
link |
Well, it does seem that beet juice and ingesting things
link |
like arginine and citrulline can improve performance
link |
for those long bouts of exercise.
link |
That's mainly going to be due to effects
link |
of those compounds on vasodilation.
link |
It's going to open up the vasculature
link |
and allow more blood flow.
link |
Do note that things like citrulline and arginine
link |
can have some side effects, if you will.
link |
They can increase the likelihood
link |
of having herpes cold sore outbreaks on the mouth.
link |
The arginine is in the pathway by which,
link |
I don't know if people know this,
link |
but the herpes virus lives on neurons
link |
of the trigeminal nerve that innervate the lips
link |
and the eyes and the mucus membranes of the face.
link |
So this is the herpes type one simplex virus.
link |
The virus lives on those neurons
link |
and then periodically inflames those neurons
link |
and that's what leads to the cold sore.
link |
It seems like arginine and citrulline
link |
can lead to increases in cold sores and canker sores
link |
and outbreaks of those kinds.
link |
So you want to be aware of that.
link |
That's not everybody, and not everybody is carrying HSV-1.
link |
Just be aware that I think it's now 80 or 90% of people.
link |
By the time they are 12 years old,
link |
they've contracted HSV-1.
link |
It's very contagious and typically people will get
link |
one outbreak and then only under conditions of stress
link |
or heightened arginine or citrulline ingestion,
link |
we'll have them later.
link |
Again, this is not necessarily a sexually an STI.
link |
This is a sexually transmitted infection.
link |
This is an infection that is passed very easily
link |
from mucus membranes, just in terms of touching objects
link |
and things of that sort.
link |
Very common in the general population.
link |
Any discussion about muscle and muscle performance
link |
would not be adequate if we didn't mention something
link |
about nutrition, but rather than have a whole discussion
link |
about nutrition, because there's lots of information
link |
about that online.
link |
Like for instance, if you want to gain muscle
link |
that you need to have a caloric surplus
link |
of about 10 to 15%, you could have a caloric surplus
link |
of more if you want to avoid gaining weight,
link |
then you would not create a caloric surplus, et cetera.
link |
You can find all that information online.
link |
That's not what this podcast is really about.
link |
We had a month where we talked a lot about hormones
link |
and food and moods.
link |
We talked about foods, but more as they relate
link |
to the nervous system.
link |
When it comes to supporting muscle,
link |
to supporting the synthesis of larger,
link |
what I call myosin balloons,
link |
it does seem that ingesting 700 to 3000 milligrams
link |
of the essential amino acid leucine
link |
with each meal is important.
link |
Now that does not necessarily mean from supplements.
link |
In fact, most people recommend that you get your protein,
link |
you get your amino acids, including your essential amino
link |
acids and your leucine from whole foods.
link |
High quality proteins, high density proteins.
link |
What do you mean by that?
link |
Well, it is true that a lot of sources of protein
link |
are found in things like beans and nuts
link |
and things like that, that all the essential amino acids
link |
can be found there.
link |
But per unit calorie, if it's in your practice,
link |
if it's in your ethics to ingest animal proteins,
link |
it's true that for instance, 200 calories of steak
link |
or chicken or fish or eggs will have a higher density
link |
of essential amino acids than the equivalent amount
link |
of calories from nuts or plants.
link |
That's just simply the way it works.
link |
So I'm not, for the vegans and vegetarians,
link |
I'm certainly not saying there's no way
link |
that you can support muscle growth.
link |
You absolutely can.
link |
Some of them might want to supplement leucine,
link |
but this 700 to 3000 milligrams of leucine per meal
link |
is one of the best ways that's been shown
link |
to support the synthesis of more myosin
link |
if your goal is hypertrophy.
link |
And it's also the way that you would support muscle repair
link |
if your goal is strength.
link |
So that's specifically geared towards muscle hypertrophy
link |
And I encourage you to think about
link |
this protein density issue
link |
and whether or not you ingest animal proteins
link |
or you don't to think about whether or not
link |
you're getting sufficient essential amino acids,
link |
especially leucine.
link |
Now, many people have addressed the question
link |
of whether or not you need to eat six or seven times a day.
link |
It turns out that you don't.
link |
That's kind of the old school thinking
link |
that you need to eat very frequently.
link |
I think for certain athletes who are very active
link |
for drug assisted,
link |
meaning people that are enhancing their testosterone levels
link |
to super physiological levels
link |
where they are experiencing very heightened levels
link |
of protein synthesis and they can utilize all that,
link |
that might make sense.
link |
Again, I'm not supporting the use
link |
of those performance enhancing drugs,
link |
but there are people doing that.
link |
And that's one of the reasons why they eat so frequently
link |
and so much protein.
link |
For typical people who are not doing that,
link |
I imagine most of you are not,
link |
then it does appear that you need to eat,
link |
but you don't need to eat six or seven times a day.
link |
It does seem like not eating once a day is also important.
link |
So somewhere between one meal a day and six meals a day
link |
lies the more reasonable two or three
link |
or maybe four times a day.
link |
I think that a whole discussion about this is warranted
link |
and we'll have this discussion with Dr. Galpin
link |
at a future time of whether or not eating protein
link |
more frequently can enhance this myosin synthesis.
link |
But I think the simple takeaway from the literature
link |
that I was able to extract and from my discussion
link |
with him is eating two to four times a day,
link |
making sure you're getting sufficient amino acids
link |
in a way that's compatible with your ethics
link |
and with your nutritional regimen
link |
is going to support muscle repair, muscle growth,
link |
strength improvements, et cetera, just fine.
link |
There's one more thing that I'd like to cover,
link |
which is the relationship between particular kinds
link |
of exercise and our ability to think
link |
and perform cognitive functions.
link |
We all hear that exercise is so vital for our brain
link |
that it supports our brain health and our body health.
link |
And indeed that's true provided it's done correctly.
link |
However, many of us are familiar with the experience
link |
of going for a run or going for a swim
link |
or working out hard in the gym
link |
and then not being able to use our brain
link |
to be essentially useless for cognitive functions
link |
for the rest of the day.
link |
I discussed this with Dr. Galpin this morning
link |
and I learned something very interesting,
link |
which is that hard bouts of exercise
link |
of the sort where you're training near failure
link |
or you're generating focused muscular contractions
link |
for obsession that lasts anywhere from,
link |
I don't know, 30, 45 minutes, maybe 60 minutes
link |
or a long run where you're engaging
link |
in some interval training during that run.
link |
After exercise, there's a reduction
link |
in oxygenation of the brain.
link |
So there's actually a quite significant dip
link |
in the amount of oxygen that your neurons are getting
link |
and therefore your ability to think.
link |
So it's important that you control the intensity
link |
and the duration of your training sessions
link |
so that you're still able to do well in life
link |
and lean into life the way you need to,
link |
because I'm guessing most of you are not in a position
link |
to just prioritize your physical training.
link |
You also need to use your minds.
link |
I'm certainly familiar with wanting to get exercise
link |
but also the requirement of needing
link |
to perform cognitive work throughout the day.
link |
It also turns out that you can leverage something
link |
interesting about exercise and nerve to muscle work
link |
in ways that can benefit cognitive function and focus.
link |
And it has to do with the way that your body
link |
and your nervous system predict bouts
link |
of intense focused effort.
link |
So let's say you're doing resistance training two
link |
or three times a week, maybe even four times a week,
link |
and you're doing it consistently at a given time.
link |
There are clocks, literally biological clocks
link |
within the liver and within the brain
link |
that learn to predict that focus and that intense work.
link |
If you are trying to get intense cognitive work done,
link |
you might try scheduling that cognitive work
link |
on the days when you don't do physical training
link |
at the same time when you normally would do
link |
that intense focused physical training.
link |
Because the systems of the body
link |
that generate acetylcholine release
link |
and other neuromodulators, the systems of the body
link |
and brain that generate focused effort,
link |
those are on this sort of clock mechanism
link |
in a way that you likely will find
link |
that after just a week of training at regular times,
link |
you will be able to focus readily on other things
link |
when you're not training,
link |
provided you do it during the period of time of day
link |
when you normally would train.
link |
So this is kind of an indirect positive effect.
link |
You're harnessing the focus and the expectation of focus
link |
in your nervous system for that particular time of day.
link |
And of course, we'd be remiss
link |
if we didn't talk about time of day for training.
link |
Turns out that whether or not you train in the morning
link |
or in the afternoon, it doesn't really seem to matter
link |
for sake of things like hypertrophy and strength, et cetera.
link |
Everyone seems to have a time of day
link |
that they prefer to train.
link |
I've said before, and there are reasons
link |
based on body temperature rhythms and cortisol release
link |
that training 30 minutes, three hours or 11 hours
link |
after your normal waking time can be very beneficial
link |
and can provide a sort of predictability or regularity
link |
to when your body will be ready to train
link |
and best apt to train well.
link |
There is some evidence that training in the afternoon
link |
is better for performance,
link |
whereas training for body composition changes
link |
and strength changes, et cetera,
link |
doesn't really matter when you train.
link |
So you also want to make it compatible with sleep,
link |
compatible with work.
link |
That really gets down into the weeds of optimization.
link |
But I think it's interesting to note
link |
that if you're going to train at a regular time,
link |
you can take the days when you don't train
link |
and use that to enhance your cognitive focus
link |
for things that have nothing to do with exercise.
link |
So this might be writing or reading or music or math,
link |
Typically, I restrict these podcast episodes
link |
to about 90 minutes,
link |
so-called ultradian cycle for learning.
link |
Today was a bit longer,
link |
and I admit that I tried to pack a lot into this.
link |
It is the last episode in this month
link |
on physical performance.
link |
I figured in this case, more is better,
link |
especially since everything is timestamped for you.
link |
You certainly don't have to watch it all at once,
link |
and you can come back to it over and over again
link |
into the precise locations in the episode that you like
link |
in order to take notes
link |
or extract the information that you need.
link |
I'd like to point you to Dr. Andy Galpin's page.
link |
I highly recommend looking into the work that he's doing
link |
if you want more details.
link |
He's very, very skilled, excellent communicator.
link |
He's superb at what he does.
link |
He works with athletes.
link |
He works with typical folks in the exercise
link |
and muscle physiology world.
link |
Brad Schoenfield's work,
link |
I also have a lot of respect for.
link |
I've never met him.
link |
There's no paid endorsement here.
link |
They're not sponsors or related to the podcast in any way.
link |
I just think the work is of very high quality,
link |
and they are both on the academic side
link |
and the practical side,
link |
and of course, there are other people out there
link |
doing fabulous work in this area as well.
link |
If you like this podcast and you're benefiting
link |
from the information that you're learning
link |
and you want to support us,
link |
the simplest and most straightforward way to do that
link |
is a zero cost way, which is to subscribe to, excuse me,
link |
subscribe to the podcast on YouTube,
link |
click the subscribe button,
link |
and to subscribe on Apple and Spotify as well.
link |
That really helps us.
link |
It helps us get the message about the podcast out
link |
more broadly generally,
link |
and it ensures that you don't miss any episodes.
link |
We release episodes every Monday,
link |
but starting soon and from time to time,
link |
we release shorter episodes in between.
link |
So you're sure to hear about those episodes.
link |
In addition, check out the sponsors
link |
that we mentioned at the beginning of the podcast.
link |
If you like, and if you're able to,
link |
supporting us through those sponsors
link |
is a terrific way to support our production staff
link |
and the podcast generally.
link |
A zero cost way to support the podcast
link |
is to tell your friends, tell your neighbors,
link |
tell anyone that you think
link |
might benefit from the information.
link |
The way this podcast is set up,
link |
the information is batched into four or five episodes,
link |
all centered around a given theme or topic,
link |
like hormones, like sleep.
link |
So the episodes on sleep, for instance,
link |
that were way back in January,
link |
or what seems like way back,
link |
are still every bit as relevant today
link |
as they were back in January
link |
for somebody that has challenges with sleep
link |
and wants to understand sleep and get better at sleep
link |
or wants to understand their dreams
link |
or how to use sleep and dreaming
link |
to leverage neuroplasticity and learning.
link |
So if you pass information along about the podcast,
link |
We also have a Patreon.
link |
You can go to patreon.com slash Andrew Huberman.
link |
There, you can support the podcast
link |
at any level that you like.
link |
And as always, please put your questions
link |
about the podcast episodes and suggestions
link |
for future episodes in the comment section.
link |
I really do read through all those comments.
link |
It takes me some time, but I do read through those.
link |
I reply to as many of them as I can, but I do read them.
link |
And they're a great way for us to get feedback.
link |
On Apple, you can give us a five-star review
link |
if you think we deserve that.
link |
And if you want to do all these things, you're welcome to.
link |
If you want to do just one of them, we understand.
link |
And if you do none of them,
link |
we still appreciate that you come here
link |
to digest the information
link |
about science and science-related tools.
link |
In today's episode, I mentioned various supplements,
link |
various compounds that if you deem it right and safe for you
link |
can benefit athletic performance
link |
and muscle physiology, et cetera.
link |
We've partnered with Thorne, T-H-O-R-N-E,
link |
because Thorne supplements,
link |
we believe are of the highest possible stringency
link |
What you see on the bottle is what's in the bottle.
link |
And the quality of ingredients that they include
link |
So much so that they partnered with the Mayo Clinic
link |
and all the major sports teams.
link |
If you go to Thorne, T-H-O-R-N-E.com
link |
slash the letter U slash Huberman,
link |
you can see all the supplements that I take
link |
and you can get 20% off any of those supplements,
link |
as well as 20% off any of the other supplements
link |
that Thorne sells.
link |
So if you go to Thorne.com slash the letter U slash Huberman,
link |
any of those supplements listed there,
link |
and then if you navigate through their site
link |
and you find something else that you like,
link |
we'll be 20% off at checkout.
link |
Last but not least,
link |
I want to thank you for your time and attention today.
link |
And as always, thank you for your interest in science.
link |
And as always, thank you for your time and attention today.