back to indexHow To Build Endurance In Your Brain & Body | Huberman Lab Podcast #23
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Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,
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where we discuss science and science-based tools
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for everyday life.
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I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology
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and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.
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This podcast is separate from my teaching
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and research roles at Stanford.
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It is, however, part of my desire and effort
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to bring zero cost to consumer information
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about science and science-related tools
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to the general public.
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In keeping with that theme,
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I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.
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Our first sponsor is Roca.
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Roca makes sunglasses and eyeglasses,
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and I'm delighted that they're a partner
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and a sponsor for the podcast.
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As some of you may already know,
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I've spent two decades or more studying the visual system,
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how we see vision is absolutely the most important sense
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by which humans navigate the world and survive,
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and our eyes as two pieces of our brain
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do many other important things as well.
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So taking good care of our eyesight is essential.
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Founded by two All-American swimmers from Stanford,
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Roca was born out of an obsession for performance.
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They've carefully put science and purpose
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behind their design choices,
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and they've built absolutely terrific products as a result.
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The glasses are amazing.
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I love them because they look great,
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they are super comfortable,
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and the optical clarity is incredible.
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They filter out sunlight in a way
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that still allows you to see contrast and shadows
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the way you need to.
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For me, one of the things that's really irritating
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is if I have a pair of sunglasses
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that don't allow me to see all the things I want to see.
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And with Roca glasses, I get incredible contrast,
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but then I can also relax and be outdoors in bright light.
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And as the amount of light changes with cloud cover
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and things of that sort,
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my ability to see my surroundings
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is still really sharp and really clear.
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And that only comes from really understanding
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how the visual system works
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and how it adjusts to contrast and adaptation
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and all these different things.
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They really understand the science,
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and that went into the design of these glasses.
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And as many of you know,
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sunlight and the viewing of light
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is also very important for setting circadian rhythms.
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So that's also been incorporated
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into the design and science behind these glasses.
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I do wear readers.
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I don't often wear them during the podcast,
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but I have to wear reading glasses at night.
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So I use their readers
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and I own a pair of their sunglasses,
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and I'm delighted with them.
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If you'd like to check out Roca glasses,
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you can go to roca.com, that's R-O-K-A.com,
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and enter the code Huberman
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to save 20% off your first order.
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That's R-O-K-A.com, enter the code Huberman at checkout
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to get 20% off your first order.
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Today's podcast is also brought to you by Inside Tracker.
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Inside Tracker is a personalized nutrition platform
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that analyzes data from your blood and DNA
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to help you better understand your body
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and reach your health goals.
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I'm a big believer in getting regular blood work done
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for the simple reason that many of the important things
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that are vital to our immediate and long-term health
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can only be detected in a good quality blood test.
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The problem with blood tests is that most blood tests,
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you get a lot of information back about levels
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that are too high or too low of this thing
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or the other thing, but making sense of that
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and what to do with that information is very challenging.
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Even if you have a really attentive physician,
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oftentimes it's mysterious
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as to what to do with all this data.
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With Inside Tracker, they make it very easy to understand
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what all the metabolic factors, hormone factors, et cetera,
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mean for you and what to do about those markers.
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So they offer you directives
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in terms of nutrition, supplementation,
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as well as lifestyle factors like exercise, sleep, et cetera,
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that can allow you to take control of those numbers
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and bring them into the ranges that are best for you
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and your long-term health.
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Another feature of Inside Tracker that's great
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is their inner age test.
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This test shows you what your biological age
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and how it compares to your chronological age,
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which I can only imagine most everybody, including me,
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are extremely interested in, how long am I likely to live?
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How old am I really in terms of my biology?
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If you'd like to try Inside Tracker,
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you can visit insidetracker.com slash Huberman
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to get 25% off any of Inside Tracker's plans.
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Use the code Huberman at checkout.
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Today's episode is also brought to us by Athletic Greens.
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Athletic Greens is an all-in-one
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vitamin mineral probiotic drink.
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I've been using Athletic Greens since 2012
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and so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast.
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With Athletic Greens, you get a ton of factors
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that are good for you,
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mixed into this one really good tasting drink.
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I like to mix mine with water
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and a little bit of lemon juice,
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and I drink that once or twice a day,
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typically once early in the day,
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and sometimes also in the afternoon or even evening.
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I'm able to sleep after drinking in the evening just fine.
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The reason I've been using Athletic Greens for so long
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that I continue to use Athletic Greens is that,
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one, I feel better when I take it, I just do.
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Psychologically, physically, I feel better,
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but also it covers all my bases of the things that I need
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for my general health.
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It's sort of a foundational supplement,
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as I like to call it.
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In fact, when people ask me, what should I take?
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If I were to recommend just one supplement that people take,
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it would be Athletic Greens.
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With Athletic Greens, you get support for your gut,
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which is important because the gut microbiome
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is important for the gut brain access,
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for mood, metabolism, hormones, et cetera.
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There are so many data that support that statement.
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As well, there are many factors in Athletic Greens
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that support general health, metabolism, endocrine factors,
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immunity, et cetera.
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So with Athletic Greens, I drink it once or twice a day,
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and I know that I've got all that covered.
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If you'd like to try Athletic Greens,
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you can go to athleticgreens.com slash Huberman.
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And if you do that, you can claim a special offer.
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They'll send you five free travel packs
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plus a year supply, excuse me, of vitamin D3 and K2.
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So you get the five free travel packs
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and a year supply of D3.
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If you go to athleticgreens.com slash Huberman,
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you can claim that special offer.
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For the last month, four episodes to be exact,
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we've been discussing physical performance
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and skill learning.
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We've talked about how to learn skills faster,
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whether or not those are skills for athletic performance,
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dance, music, things of that sort.
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We've also talked about how to gain strength
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and how to lose fat faster by leveraging the nervous system.
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Things like shiver and non-shiver,
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non-exercise activity-induced thermogenesis.
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We talked about how neurons can actually
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trigger accelerated fat loss.
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We talked about hypertrophy, also called muscle growth.
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And we covered everything from sets and reps, protocols,
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how long to stay in a cold ice bath, when to get out,
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how to keep shivering.
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We've covered a lot of tools and a lot of science.
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So if you're interested in those things
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and you even perhaps want to learn a little bit
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about how we make energy, ATP, from carbohydrates
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or from fats, it's all covered in the previous four episodes.
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This was going to be the time
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that we move to a new topic entirely,
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but we are going to do one more episode
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in this series on physical performance
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for the simple reason that you asked many questions
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about something that's vitally important,
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both for physical performance
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and long-term and short-term health, and that's endurance.
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And so today we are going to talk about endurance.
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Now, if you're a strength athlete
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or you're not interested in endurance,
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don't depart just yet,
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because it turns out that there are ways to train endurance
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that are very different
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than I would have previously imagined.
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If you only think about long runs, long swims,
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marathons, half marathons, 10Ks, 5Ks,
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and that sort of thing puts you to sleep,
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kind of like Costello is snoring
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in the background right now.
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He's not a long distance endurance athlete, that's for sure.
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If you're interested in those things,
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or if you are averse to those things,
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I encourage you to continue listening,
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because we are going to talk about a little bit of science
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and then some specific protocols
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that really define what endurance is,
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the four types of endurance,
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and ways to train those in concert
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with the other things that you might be doing,
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like weight training or skill training or yoga.
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And if you are an endurance athlete,
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we are going to cover a lot of tools and science
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that I'm certain will also help enhance your training
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and performance in races or even just recreationally.
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The topic of endurance,
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I think has been badly misrepresented, frankly, online.
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And when you start digging into the science
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and you start talking to real experts in this area,
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what you discover, what I've discovered,
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is that it's an incredibly interesting area
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because it teaches us so much
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about how our body and our brain use fuels
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and how we can control which fuels
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are used by our body and brain.
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So today we will talk about the four kinds of endurance.
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We will also cover the topic of hydration,
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which might sound incredibly boring,
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like, okay, just drink more water.
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But it's really interesting
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because not only is hydration
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a limiting factor on performance,
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but there is a right way to hydrate
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and there is a wrong way to hydrate.
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There actually is a formula that I'll teach you
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to know how much water to be drinking,
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depending on your activity levels.
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And if that sounds like a simple thing,
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like, oh, just tap off water until your urine runs clear,
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that's actually the wrong advice.
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It turns out that if you don't hydrate properly,
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you can see 20 to 30% reductions in performance,
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whether or not that's strength,
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whether or not that's increasing hypertrophy,
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whether or not that's running, swimming,
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even mental performance.
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So even if you're not an athlete
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or a recreational athlete at all,
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I encourage you to stay tuned for the part about hydration.
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So we're going to cover as usual a little bit of science,
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and then we're going to dive right into protocols
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that you can apply if you like,
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and if you deem those correct and safe for you.
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Before we dive into all that,
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I want to make an important announcement,
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which is all the episodes of the Huberman Lab Podcast
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are now housed on a single website,
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which is hubermanlab.com.
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If you go to hubermanlab.com,
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you can find all the episodes in YouTube, Apple,
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and Spotify format with links there.
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The website is also searchable.
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So if you go into the little search function,
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which you'll find very easily,
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and you put in, for instance, creatine or sleep
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or ice bath or sauna,
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it will take you to the specific episodes
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that contain that information.
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And in addition, if you go to the website, hubermanlab.com,
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you have the opportunity to sign up
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for what we call the Huberman Lab Neural Network.
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The Huberman Lab Neural Network is a zero cost resource
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where once a month, perhaps more often,
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you'll receive a email newsletter,
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and that newsletter will contain specific protocols,
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announcements, attachments of PDFs
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and things of that sort of protocols, tools,
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and science from the podcast.
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We will also make any announcements about live lectures,
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which at some point I'll probably start doing
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in various cities in the US
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and probably around the world as well,
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as well as other things
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that I think would be really useful to you,
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all of course at zero cost.
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So that's hubermanlab.com.
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Sign up for the neural network newsletter.
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You can find that in the menu tab
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or it might pop up when you get there.
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And I hope you will join.
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And as a final announcement,
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if you're not already following us on Instagram,
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you can go to Huberman Lab on Instagram.
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And if you do that, I often make announcements
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and release protocols and links to protocols
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and things there as well.
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I briefly want to touch on something
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from the previous episode,
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which is that if you are somebody
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that is trying to increase muscle strength and or size,
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or if you're simply somebody
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who doesn't want to increase muscle strength and size,
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and you just want to maintain the musculature that you have,
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it's vital that you perform at least five sets
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of resistance training per muscle per week.
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If we don't do that, we lose muscle over time.
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And that is one reason among many
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to have a regular resistance training protocol.
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Nobody wants to start resembling a folded over envelope
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or a melted candle.
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No one wants to have challenges getting up out of a chair
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or off the ground.
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Maintaining musculature is vital,
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not just to our immediate health,
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but to our long-term health trajectory.
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So I just want to emphasize that point.
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If you're curious about the sets, the reps,
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how close to failure to go or not go,
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whether or not you should be
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doing your cardiovascular training
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before or after your weight training,
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all of that is in the previous episode,
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right down to the details.
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And I like to think it made simple for you to understand.
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But I do strongly believe that resistance training,
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whether or not it's with body weight or bands or weights,
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or simply lifting rocks in the yard or logs in the yard,
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is vital for our systemic physiology
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and our overall health.
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And that includes our brain health.
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And I described the reasons for that
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and the mechanisms in the previous episode.
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Today, I'd like to talk about endurance
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and how to build endurance and how to use endurance
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for the health of your entire body.
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Endurance, as the name suggests,
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is our ability to engage in continuous bouts of exercise
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or continuous movement or continuous effort of any kind.
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And I do believe that our ability to engage in activities
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that we call endurance training
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or physical endurance activities
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do have carry over to mental performance
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of things that require long-term effort.
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I'll touch on that at the end
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and why there's reason to believe
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that there's a biological crossover
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between those two things.
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I don't think it's simply the case
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that if you train yourself to be a strength
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and speed athlete and to do short bouts of exercise,
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they're very intense,
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that you can only do mental work
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that's of short bouts and very intense.
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But it is clear that cardiovascular exercise,
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exercise where you're getting your heart rate up
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continuously for a period of time
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and endurance exercise,
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we will define what that is in a moment,
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is vital for tapping into and enhancing various aspects
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of our biology in the body and in the brain
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such that our brain can perform work
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for longer periods of time,
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focused work, learning, et cetera.
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So I want to dive into the topic of endurance
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and I want to just begin by addressing something
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that's vital to any kind of effort,
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whether or not it's mental effort or physical effort.
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So as always a little bit of science
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and then we'll get right into protocols.
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So the key thing to understand
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about energy production in the body,
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meaning your ability to think,
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your ability to talk,
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your ability to walk,
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your ability to run,
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is this thing that we call ATP.
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ATP and mitochondria,
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which are just little what we call organelles within cells,
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these little factories that make energy, if you will,
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ATP is required for anything that requires energy,
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for anything that you do that requires effort.
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And there are different ways to get ATP.
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And we have been gifted as a species
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with the ability to convert lots of things into ATP.
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We can convert carbohydrates,
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literally the kinds of carbohydrates.
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You eat a bagel, you eat a piece of pizza.
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Pizza usually has dough and it has cheese
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and some other things.
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Costello here is me talking about pizza.
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Costello loves pizza by the way.
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Eating a piece of pizza,
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it gets converted into various things,
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fatty acids from the fats,
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glucose from the bread,
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and those things get converted into ATP within cells
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through things like glycolysis,
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things like lipolysis.
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I talked about this in previous episodes.
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So our muscles and our neurons
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use different fuel sources to generate ATP.
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The ones that are used first
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for short bouts of intense activity
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are things like phosphocreatine.
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If you've only heard about creatine as a supplement,
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well, phosphocreatine actually exists on our muscles.
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And that's why people take creatine.
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You can load your muscles with more creatine.
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And excuse me, phosphocreatine is great
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for short, intense bouts of effort.
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So when you're really pushing hard on something physical,
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let's say you see a car on the side of the road
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and that car is stalled and the person says,
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hey, can you help me push my car?
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And you start to push,
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that's going to be phosphocreatine
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is going to be your main fuel source.
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Then you start to tap into things like glucose,
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which is literally just carbohydrate,
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it's just sugar that's in your blood.
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And then if you keep pushing on that car,
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you keep in engaging in a particular effort
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or you keep studying or you keep listening to this podcast,
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you start to tap into other fuel sources
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like glycogen from your liver,
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which is just, it's like a little pack,
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just like you might've packed a sandwich
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or something for work.
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You have a little pack of glycogen in your liver
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that you can rely on.
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And you have fats stored in adipose tissue.
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Even if you have very, very low body fat percentage,
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like you're one of these people
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who has like 3% or 5% body fat,
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really thin skin, very little body fat,
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you can extract lipids, fatty acids from that body fat.
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It's like a storage pack.
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It is a storage pack for energy
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that can be converted to ATP.
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So without going into any more detail,
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when I say today energy, or I say ATP,
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just remember that regardless of your diet,
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regardless of your nutritional plan,
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your body has the capacity to use creatine,
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glucose, glycogen, lipids,
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and if you're ketogenic, ketones.
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We'll talk about ketosis in order to generate fuel energy.
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Now, the other crucial point
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is that in order to complete that process
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of taking these fuels and converting them into energy,
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most of the time you need oxygen.
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You need air basically in your system.
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Now, it's not actual air.
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You need oxygen molecules in your system,
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comes in through your mouth and your nose,
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goes to your lungs and distributes via the bloodstream.
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Oxygen is not a fuel,
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but like a fire that has no oxygen,
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you can't actually burn the logs,
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but when you blow a lot of oxygen onto a fire,
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basically onto logs with a flame there,
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then basically it will take fire, it will burn.
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Oxygen allows you to burn fuel.
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So today we are going to ask the critical questions.
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What allows us to perform?
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What allows us to continue effort for long periods of time?
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And that effort could be a run, it could be a swim,
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it could be studying,
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it could be anything that extends over a long period of time.
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Well, you're going to need energy
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and you're going to need oxygen.
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But the way to answer a question,
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like what allows us to endure, right?
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Endurance, what allows us to keep going?
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Well, we think of things like willpower,
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but what's willpower?
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Willpower is neurons, it's neurons in our brain.
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We have this thing called the central governor,
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which decides whether or not we should or could continue
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or whether or not we should stop,
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whether or not we should quit, okay?
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So whether or not you're somebody who has a lot
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of what we would call resilience and endurance,
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or whether or not you're somebody who taps out early
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and quits early or can't handle frustration,
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that has to do with your fuel utilization
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in specific neurons.
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So we have to ask the question,
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what is the limiting factor on performance, right?
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So instead of saying, what allows us to endure,
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we should say, what prevents us from enduring?
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What prevents us from moving forward?
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What are the factors that say, you know what?
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No more, I'm not going to continue this run.
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I've had a really long, hard day,
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or maybe I've had an easy day or I'm feeling lazy,
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I just don't even really feel like getting up and moving.
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So what we're going to talk about today
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actually gets right down to the heart of motivation
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and fuel use, motivation and fuel allocation.
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And we are going to talk about specific training protocols
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that you can follow that have carry over
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between the bodily systems of running, swimming, et cetera,
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and the way that your brain works.
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So let's talk about endurance by asking first,
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what are the limiting factors on endurance?
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Because in addressing that and answering that,
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we will understand what allows us to get into effort
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and to continue effort.
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There are five main categories of things
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that allow us to engage in effort.
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And they are neurons, nerves, muscle, muscle,
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blood, things in our blood, our heart, and our lungs.
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Now, I don't want to completely write off things
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like the immune system and other systems of the body,
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but nerve, muscle, blood, heart, and lungs
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are the five that I want to focus on today
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because that's where most of the data are.
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As we go forward into this,
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I want to acknowledge Dr. Andy Galpin,
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who, as with the last episode,
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has been tremendously helpful and informative
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in terms of the exercise physiology.
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He's a true expert.
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He has a laboratory.
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He's a full professor who does work on muscle biopsy,
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who understands the science,
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but who also works with athletes
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and works with recreational athletes,
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professional athletes,
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really understands at a variety of levels
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how all these systems work.
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He's the person I consulted with about today's episode,
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although I did access other literature as well.
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And I'm going to mention a key review
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for any of you aficionados
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who really want to get down into the weeds.
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But I encourage you, if you want more detail,
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to check out Dr. Andy Galpin's YouTube page.
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I think he's also on Twitter.
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He's definitely on Instagram.
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His content is excellent, and he really understands.
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I have learned, and I really believe,
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that an intellectual is somebody who understands a topic
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at multiple levels of specificity of detail
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and can communicate that.
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And Andy is a true intellectual
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of muscle physiology and performance.
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And if you hear the word intellectual
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and you kind of back up and cringe from that,
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understand that he's also a practitioner.
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So thank you, Andrew Galpin, Andy Galpin,
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for your support in these episodes.
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And we hope to have you as a guest on the podcast soon.
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So nerve, muscle, blood, heart, and lungs.
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Let's talk about neurons and how they work, okay?
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But I want to tell you about an experiment
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that's going to make it very clear
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why quitting is a mental thing, not a physical thing.
link |
So why do we quit?
link |
Well, an experiment was done a couple of years ago
link |
and was published in the journal Cell,
link |
Cell Press Journal, excellent journal,
link |
showing that there is a class of neurons
link |
in our brainstem, in the back of our brain,
link |
that if they shut off, we quit.
link |
Now, these neurons release epinephrine.
link |
Epinephrine is adrenaline.
link |
And anytime we are engaged in effort of any kind,
link |
we are releasing epinephrine.
link |
Anytime we're awake, really,
link |
we are releasing epinephrine into our brain.
link |
In fact, this little group of neurons
link |
in the back of our brain,
link |
it's called the locus coeruleus, if you like,
link |
is churning out epinephrine all the time.
link |
But if something stresses us out, it churns out more,
link |
and then it acts as kind of an alertness signal
link |
for the whole brain.
link |
We also, of course,
link |
have adrenaline epinephrine released in our body,
link |
which makes our body ready for things.
link |
So think about epinephrine as a readiness signal.
link |
And when we are engaged in effort,
link |
this readiness signal is being churned into our brain.
link |
When we're relaxed and we're falling asleep,
link |
epinephrine levels are low, okay?
link |
So they did a really interesting experiment
link |
where they had subjects engage in bouts of effort
link |
of trying to move forward toward a goal,
link |
but they manipulated the visual environment
link |
with these stripes,
link |
kind of like fences passing on both sides of them.
link |
And by doing that, they could trick subjects
link |
into thinking that their effort
link |
was either allowing them to move forward, right?
link |
Because these rungs on the fence were moving past,
link |
or that their effort was futile,
link |
that they were no longer moving forward
link |
because they would make the rungs move slowly
link |
even though the subjects were making a lot of effort
link |
to move forward, okay?
link |
So this is analogous or similar to being on a treadmill
link |
and you're trying to walk on this treadmill
link |
and you just can't move the conveyor, right?
link |
Or you're in virtual reality
link |
and you're putting a ton of effort,
link |
but it seems like you're moving excruciatingly slow.
link |
I had this experience recently in real life.
link |
I was doing a swim in the Pacific.
link |
I was trying to go south and I was swimming
link |
and I was caught in a current,
link |
not the kind that pulls you out to ocean.
link |
And I kept looking to my left
link |
and I saw this hotel on the shoreline.
link |
And then I was swimming and swimming
link |
and swimming and swimming.
link |
And 20 minutes later, I looked to my left
link |
and the hotel is still exactly where it was before,
link |
which meant that I wasn't moving.
link |
Eventually, either the current changed or something changed
link |
and I eventually swam past the hotel,
link |
got back on the beach and eventually drove home.
link |
That's essentially what they did in this experiment.
link |
But what they found was these neurons
link |
that release epinephrine,
link |
there's another cell type called glia,
link |
which actually means glue in Latin,
link |
that is paying attention to how much epinephrine
link |
is being released.
link |
And at some point, the system reaches a threshold.
link |
It reaches this threshold and it shuts off
link |
the release of more epinephrine.
link |
It's like, I quit, that's it, no more effort signal.
link |
If they could extend the time
link |
before those glia said, ah, enough,
link |
if they could release more adrenaline into the system,
link |
then subjects would keep going.
link |
So our desire to continue or put differently,
link |
our willingness to continue and our desire to quit
link |
is mediated by events between our two ears.
link |
Now that doesn't mean that the body's not involved,
link |
but it means that neurons are critically important.
link |
So we have two categories of neurons that are important.
link |
The ones in our head that tell us get up and go out
link |
and take that run and the ones that allow us,
link |
encourage us to continue that run
link |
and we have neurons that shut things off and say no more.
link |
And we of course have the neurons
link |
that connect to our muscles and control our muscles.
link |
But the reason we quit is rarely because our body quits,
link |
Now, I would never want to encourage people
link |
to drive themselves to the point of injury.
link |
That's not going to be good for anybody,
link |
but it is good to know that it's neural.
link |
Our ability to persist is neural.
link |
So when people say, is it, I hear that sports
link |
or effort or fighting, or it's 90% mental, 10% physical,
link |
that whole discussion about how much is mental,
link |
how much is physical is absolutely silly.
link |
It just proves that there's no knowledge
link |
of the underlying biology behind that statement.
link |
It's neither mental nor physical.
link |
Everything is physical.
link |
Everything is neurons.
link |
Your thinking is the responsibility of chemicals
link |
and electrical signals in your head.
link |
So it's not 90% mental, 10% physical.
link |
It's 100% nervous system.
link |
It's neurons, okay?
link |
So when people say mental or physical,
link |
understand it's 100% neural.
link |
And I'd love for the, how much of it is mental
link |
and how much is physical to just disappear.
link |
That argument means nothing and it's not actionable.
link |
Now, what do nerves need in order to continue to fire?
link |
What do you need in order to get neurons to say,
link |
Well, they need glucose.
link |
Unless you're a keto and ketogenic adapted,
link |
you need carbohydrate is glucose.
link |
That's what neurons run on.
link |
And you need electrolytes.
link |
Neurons have what's called a sodium potassium pump,
link |
They generate electricity.
link |
We could go into all this.
link |
I will probably do an entire lecture
link |
about the action potential,
link |
but basically in order to get nerve cells to fire,
link |
to contract muscle, to say, I'm going to continue,
link |
you need sufficient sodium salt
link |
because the action potential,
link |
the actual firing of neurons is driven
link |
by sodium entering the cell, rushing into the cell.
link |
And then there's a removal of potassium.
link |
And then there's a kind of resetting of those levels
link |
by something called the sodium potassium pump
link |
and the sodium potassium pump
link |
and sodium and action potentials.
link |
Even if you don't know anything about that is ATP dependent.
link |
It requires energy.
link |
So you need energy in order to get neurons to fire.
link |
And it is pH dependent.
link |
It depends on the conditions or the environment
link |
within the brain being of a certain pH or acidity.
link |
pH is about how acid or how basic the environment is.
link |
And we will talk a little bit about pH in simple terms
link |
that you can understand.
link |
So nerves need salt, they need potassium,
link |
and it turns out they need magnesium
link |
and you need glucose and carbohydrates
link |
in order to power those neurons
link |
unless you are running on ketones.
link |
And to run on ketones,
link |
you have to make sure that you're fully keto adapted.
link |
I will talk about adding in ketones
link |
on top of carbohydrate at the end of the episode.
link |
Okay, so that's how nerves work.
link |
You need carbohydrate, you need sodium, potassium,
link |
and magnesium in order to drive the brain.
link |
Muscle, muscle is going to engage and generate energy first
link |
by using this phosphocreatine system.
link |
High bouts of effort, really intense effort,
link |
short-lived seconds to minutes,
link |
but probably more like seconds
link |
is going to be this phosphocreatine,
link |
literally a fuel source in the muscle
link |
that you're going to burn,
link |
just like you would logs on a fire.
link |
And glycogen, which is stored carbohydrate in the muscle,
link |
that also can be burned,
link |
just like logs on a fire to generate energy.
link |
So let me make this crystal clear.
link |
If you move your wrist towards your shoulder
link |
and contract your bicep really hard,
link |
muscle fibers are burning up their own carbohydrate.
link |
They're converting that into ATP
link |
in order to generate that energy, okay?
link |
And pH is important and temperature is important.
link |
In the episode on supercharge, your physical performance,
link |
I talked all about how by using cooling,
link |
specifically of the palms or the bottoms of the feet
link |
or the cheeks of the face using particular methods,
link |
you can adjust the temperature of the body and of muscle
link |
in a way that allows you to do more work,
link |
to do more reps, to run further,
link |
to keep going and to persist.
link |
And that's because if temperature is too low or too high,
link |
then ATP is not going to be available
link |
because of this whole thing
link |
called the pyruvate kinase pathway
link |
and the temperature dependence of pyruvate kinase.
link |
Check out that episode if you want to learn more about that,
link |
but temperature is important and pH is also important.
link |
So we've got nerve, muscle,
link |
and then there's stuff in our blood
link |
that's available as an energy source.
link |
And in blood, we've got glucose,
link |
so literally blood sugar that's floating around.
link |
So let's say you have fasted for three days,
link |
your blood glucose is going to be very low,
link |
so that's not going to be a great fuel source,
link |
but you will start to liberate fats from your adipose tissue
link |
from your fat, fatty acids will start to mobilize
link |
into the bloodstream and you can burn those for energy
link |
and oxygen in your blood.
link |
When you inhale, you're bringing oxygen into your blood.
link |
So these are all fuel sources in your neurons,
link |
in your muscle, in your blood,
link |
in your various tissues that are providing the opportunity
link |
to give effort, to induce effort,
link |
whether or not it's a run or a swim or writing or talking.
link |
Now, there are some other factors that are important
link |
and those are the heart, which is going to move blood.
link |
So the more that the heart can move blood and oxygen,
link |
well, the more fuel that's going to be available
link |
for you to engage in muscular effort and thinking effort.
link |
So your heart is vitally important
link |
to your muscle's ability to work
link |
and your brain's ability to work.
link |
And as I've mentioned, oxygen a few times,
link |
it should be obvious then that the lungs are very important.
link |
You need to bring oxygen in
link |
and distribute it to all these tissues
link |
because oxygen is critical
link |
for the conversion of carbohydrates
link |
and the conversion of fats.
link |
And we could get into the discussion
link |
about whether or not oxygen is important
link |
for ketogenic metabolism, but you need oxygen there.
link |
You need to breathe and you need to breathe properly.
link |
So I just covered what would normally be
link |
about four lectures of energy consumption
link |
and energy utilization.
link |
I didn't go into much detail at all,
link |
but what I want you to imagine
link |
is that you've got these different cell types.
link |
You've got neurons, you've got muscle.
link |
They need to collaborate in order to generate effort
link |
or to make the decision to do something
link |
or to think hard or to run hard or to run far.
link |
And then you've got fuel sources,
link |
both in the neurons, in the muscle, in your blood,
link |
and then the heart and lungs are going to help
link |
distribute the oxygen and those fuels.
link |
And of course you have that little energy pack
link |
that we call the liver that will allow you
link |
to pull out a little more carbohydrate
link |
if you need it for work, okay?
link |
So that's as much as I want to cover
link |
about energy consumption
link |
because that's a lot.
link |
But what it tells you is that when you eat
link |
and you use food as a fuel source,
link |
that food can be broken down
link |
and you can immediately burn the glucose
link |
that's in your bloodstream,
link |
or you can rely on some of the stored fuel in your liver,
link |
or you can rely on stored fuel in the muscle,
link |
so-called glycogen.
link |
And there are a lot of different ways
link |
that we can generate ATP.
link |
So when we ask the question,
link |
what's limiting for performance?
link |
What is going to allow us to endure,
link |
to engage in effort and endure long bouts of effort
link |
or even moderately long bouts of effort?
link |
We need to ask which of those things,
link |
nerve, muscle, blood, heart, and lungs is limiting?
link |
Or put differently,
link |
we ask what should we be doing with our neurons?
link |
What should we be doing with our muscles?
link |
What should we be doing with our blood?
link |
What should we be doing with our heart?
link |
And what should we be doing with our lungs
link |
that's going to allow us to build endurance
link |
for mental and physical work
link |
and to be able to go longer, further with more intensity?
link |
That's the real question.
link |
How can we do more work?
link |
And the way we do that is with energy.
link |
And the way to get energy to it is to buy those five things.
link |
And so now we're going to talk about
link |
how you can actually build different types of endurance
link |
and what that does at the level of your blood,
link |
your heart, your muscles, and your neurons.
link |
So we're going to skip back and forth
link |
between protocols, tools, and the underlying science.
link |
So rather than heavy stack the science at the front end
link |
and then just give you all the tools at the end,
link |
we're going to talk about the protocols,
link |
the four kinds of endurance and how to achieve them.
link |
And we are going to talk about the underlying science
link |
as we move through that.
link |
If you would like a lot of detailed science,
link |
I encourage you to check out a review
link |
that we've linked in the show notes.
link |
And the review is called
link |
Adaptations to Endurance and Strength Training.
link |
This is a review article with many excellent citations.
link |
It's from Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Medicine.
link |
The Cold Spring Harbor Press
link |
is an excellent scientific press.
link |
It's been the last 21 years doing summers
link |
at Cold Spring Harbor teaching neuroscience,
link |
but Cold Spring Harbor is involved
link |
in all sorts of themes and topics
link |
related to neuroscience and medicine.
link |
This review by Hughes Elifesen,
link |
Elifesen, that's the name, Elifesen and Barr,
link |
B-A-A-R, Adaptations to Endurance and Strength Training,
link |
is rich with citations.
link |
It can be downloaded as a complete PDF.
link |
There's no paywall and we will link to it.
link |
And it gets really deep into all the signaling cascades,
link |
the genetic changes within muscle
link |
with high-intensity interval training,
link |
short-term super high-intensity training, weight training.
link |
So if you're a real nerd for this stuff
link |
and you want to get right down into how PGC1 alpha,
link |
P53 and pH 20 change the adaptation features
link |
of muscle and gene regulation,
link |
that is definitely the review for you.
link |
If you're like most people
link |
and you're not really interested in that level of detail,
link |
no reason to pick up the review
link |
unless you just want to check out
link |
some of the figures and pictures.
link |
But I do want to offer that as a resource.
link |
It's been, in addition to discussions with Dr. Andy Galpin,
link |
it's been a primary resource
link |
for the content of this episode.
link |
So let's talk about the four kinds of endurance
link |
and how to achieve those.
link |
I do believe that everybody should have
link |
some sort of endurance practice,
link |
regular endurance practice.
link |
It's clear that it's vital
link |
for the functioning of the body and the mind,
link |
and there are clear longevity benefits.
link |
There are a lot of reasons why that's true,
link |
but the main one is that
link |
if we have good energy utilization
link |
in our musculature and in our blood,
link |
in our vascular system,
link |
and in our oxygenating system, our lungs,
link |
the so-called cardiovascular system,
link |
respiratory system, and musculature,
link |
the body and brain function much better.
link |
There are so many papers now,
link |
so much data to support that.
link |
So I do believe everyone
link |
should either try to maintain the muscle that they have,
link |
provided they've already gone through puberty
link |
and they should be engaged in regular endurance exercise.
link |
Now, for many people, they think endurance exercise,
link |
A hour long run, or I got to get on the Stairmaster,
link |
or I have to treadmill for hours on end each week.
link |
It turns out that's not the case.
link |
There are four kinds of endurance,
link |
and you can train specifically for any one of those,
link |
and you can vary your training.
link |
So let's talk about those four kinds of endurance,
link |
because they're very interesting,
link |
and they each have very different protocols
link |
that you use in order to build and maximize them,
link |
and now you'll understand what fuel sources they use
link |
in order to build that thing we call endurance.
link |
So first of all, we have muscular endurance.
link |
Muscular endurance is the ability for our muscles
link |
to perform work over time,
link |
and our failure to continue to be able to perform that work
link |
is going to be due to muscular fatigue,
link |
not to cardiovascular fatigue.
link |
So not because we're breathing too hard,
link |
or we can't get enough blood to the muscles,
link |
or because we quit mentally,
link |
but because the muscles themselves give out, okay?
link |
One good example of this would be
link |
if you had to pick up a stone in the yard,
link |
and that stone is not extremely heavy for you,
link |
and you needed to do that anywhere from 50 to 100 times,
link |
and you were picking it up and putting it down,
link |
and picking it up and putting it down,
link |
and picking up and putting it down,
link |
at some point, your muscles will fatigue.
link |
They will fail to endure.
link |
Muscular endurance is incredibly useful
link |
for a variety of physical pursuits,
link |
and we will talk about the mental pursuits
link |
that it supports as well.
link |
In terms of physical pursuits,
link |
the ability for a given muscle to perform repeated work
link |
is going to improve your golf swing.
link |
It's going to improve your tennis swing.
link |
It's going to improve your posture,
link |
your ability to dance,
link |
your ability to repeatedly engage in an activity
link |
that requires effort in a way that's very different
link |
from the kind of endurance that you will build
link |
simply by increasing your cardiovascular fitness,
link |
your ability to generate kind of easy repetition.
link |
So let's talk about muscular endurance and what it is.
link |
Muscular endurance is going to be something
link |
that you can perform for anywhere from 12 to 25,
link |
or even up to 100 repetitions.
link |
And that's actually how, if you like,
link |
you would train muscular endurance.
link |
And I will give the specific protocol in a few moments.
link |
So a good example is pushups, right?
link |
If you were to get on the floor and start doing pushups,
link |
even if you're somebody who has to do knees down pushups,
link |
and you're doing your pushups,
link |
eventually you won't be able to do any more pushups.
link |
And that's not going to be
link |
because you couldn't get enough oxygen into your system
link |
or your heart wasn't pumping enough blood.
link |
It's going to be because the muscles fail.
link |
So if you want to be able to do more pushups
link |
or even more pullups,
link |
muscular endurance is really what it's about.
link |
It's actually no coincidence
link |
that a lot of military bootcamp style training
link |
is not done with weights.
link |
It's done with things like pushups, pullups,
link |
sit-ups, and running,
link |
because what they're really building is muscular endurance,
link |
the ability to perform work repeatedly over time
link |
for a given set of muscles and neurons.
link |
So what's a good protocol to build muscular endurance?
link |
Let's just give that to you now
link |
and explain some of the underlying science as it follows.
link |
So a really good muscular endurance training protocol,
link |
according to the scientific literature,
link |
would be three to five sets
link |
of anywhere from 12 to 100 repetitions.
link |
That's a huge range.
link |
Now, 12 to 25 repetitions
link |
is going to be more reasonable for most people.
link |
And the rest periods are going to be
link |
anywhere from 30 to 180 seconds of rest.
link |
So anywhere from half a minute to three minutes of rest.
link |
So this might be five sets of pushups
link |
done getting your maximum pushups.
link |
For some people, that might be zero
link |
and you have to do it knees down.
link |
For some people, it might be 10 pushups.
link |
For some people, it might be 25,
link |
but you could go all the way up to 100.
link |
Rest anywhere from 30 to 180 seconds
link |
and then do your next set for a total of three to five sets.
link |
So it doesn't actually sound like a ton of work.
link |
The other thing you could do is something like a plank.
link |
A plank position is actually a way
link |
to build muscular endurance, not strength, okay?
link |
I'm sure it could be used to develop strength,
link |
but it's really about muscular endurance.
link |
So you would do three to five sets of planks.
link |
Those planks would probably,
link |
even because you're not doing repetitions,
link |
it's an isometric hold, as we say,
link |
it's kind of static hold or a wall sit
link |
would be another example.
link |
And you would do that probably for a minute or two minutes,
link |
take some rest of anywhere from 30 to 60 or 180 seconds
link |
So things like pushing a sled, pushups,
link |
isometric planks, even pull-ups, those will all work.
link |
And as with other forms of training,
link |
you would want to do this until you approach failure
link |
or actually fail and where you're unable
link |
to perform another repetition,
link |
that would mark the end of a set.
link |
The one critical feature of building muscular endurance
link |
is that it has no major eccentric loading component.
link |
Now, I haven't talked much about eccentric
link |
and concentric loading, but concentric loading
link |
is when you are shortening the muscle typically
link |
or lifting a weight and eccentric movements
link |
are when you are lengthening a muscle typically
link |
or lowering a weight.
link |
So if you do a pull-up and you get your chin over the bar
link |
or a chin-up, that's the concentric portion of the effort.
link |
And then as you lower yourself, that's the eccentric portion.
link |
Eccentric portion of resistance training of any kind,
link |
whether or not it's for endurance or for strength
link |
is one of the major causes of soreness.
link |
Some people will be more susceptible to this,
link |
excuse me, than others,
link |
but it does create more damage in muscle fibers.
link |
Muscular endurance and building muscular endurance
link |
should not include any movements
link |
that include major eccentric loads.
link |
So if you're going to do push-ups,
link |
doesn't mean that you want to drop,
link |
smash your chest into the floor.
link |
And by the way, your chest should touch the ground
link |
on every push-up, that's a real push-up, okay?
link |
It's not about breaking 90 with the elbows,
link |
it's about pushing down till your chest touch the floor
link |
and straightening out, that's a proper push-up.
link |
And a pull-up is where you pull your chin above the bar.
link |
Neither of those should include
link |
a slow eccentric or lowering component
link |
if you are using those to train muscular endurance,
link |
the three to five sets of 12 to 25
link |
and maybe even up to 100 repetitions
link |
with 30 to 180 seconds of rest in between.
link |
That means that jumping also is going to be a very poor tool
link |
for building muscular endurance
link |
because jumping has a slowing down component as you land.
link |
So things like plyometrics or agility work
link |
where you're moving from side to side
link |
and you're decelerating, you're slowing yourself down a lot,
link |
not going to be good for muscular endurance.
link |
Terrific for cardiovascular training
link |
and conditioning of other kinds
link |
and skill training and agility and all that.
link |
But if you want to build muscular endurance,
link |
you want to make your muscles able
link |
to do more work for longer,
link |
it's going to be this three to five sets
link |
of 12 to 100 reps, 30 to 180 seconds
link |
of mainly concentric movement, okay?
link |
Not a slow lowering phase or a heavy lowering phase.
link |
So that might be kettlebell swings and things of that sort.
link |
Isometrics, as I mentioned,
link |
things like plank and wall sits will work.
link |
Now what's interesting about this
link |
is that it doesn't seem at all
link |
like what people normally think of as endurance.
link |
And yet it's been shown
link |
in nice quality peer-reviewed studies,
link |
several of which are cited in the review I mentioned earlier
link |
that muscular endurance can improve our ability
link |
to engage in long bouts of what we call long duration,
link |
low intensity endurance work.
link |
So this can support long runs,
link |
it can support long swims and it can build also,
link |
it can build postural strength and endurance simultaneously.
link |
And that's mainly accomplished through isometric holds.
link |
So things like planks are actually quite good
link |
for building endurance of the spinal erector muscles
link |
that provide posture of the abdominal muscles
link |
that are helpful for posture, for being upright,
link |
for the upper neck muscles and things of that sort.
link |
These days, everyone seems to have text neck.
link |
Everyone's basically staring at their toes all the time.
link |
It has a default towards their toes.
link |
So isometric holds can be very good
link |
for building muscular endurance.
link |
You can spot people, including yourself, perhaps,
link |
with poor muscular endurance in the postural muscles
link |
because anytime they stop moving,
link |
they have to lean against a wall
link |
or their hip will move to one side
link |
or they're always leaned to one side.
link |
I am guilty of this too.
link |
Some of you have actually pointed out,
link |
I like to think out of concern,
link |
that I often am rubbing my lower back
link |
and indeed I have some asymmetries in my postural muscles,
link |
some of which are probably genetic
link |
and some of which are probably just from excessive work
link |
or something of that sort
link |
that have my right shoulder sit lower than my left
link |
and things of that sort.
link |
If I wanted to improve those,
link |
I could improve those by really focusing on symmetry
link |
and isometric symmetry,
link |
meaning holding my hands at equivalent positions in planks
link |
and doing isometric holds
link |
for building muscular endurance of the postural muscles.
link |
But this can also be done with, as I mentioned,
link |
kettlebell swings for the lower back and legs
link |
and posterior chain.
link |
So there are a number of different exercises
link |
you could do this with,
link |
but it should be compound exercises mainly.
link |
It's rare for people to do
link |
this kind of muscular endurance work
link |
specifically for things like bicep curls or triceps.
link |
And there aren't many activities
link |
that really rely on isolation of those muscles repeatedly.
link |
I'm sure there are some out there,
link |
but it's kind of hard to imagine.
link |
So you can do this with isometrics,
link |
you can do this with more standard
link |
non-isometric type movements,
link |
but make sure there isn't a strong eccentric load.
link |
So now let's talk about the science briefly
link |
of why this works.
link |
Well, that takes us back to this issue of fuel utilization
link |
So if we were to say, okay, let's say you do a plank
link |
and you're planking for, you know,
link |
maybe you're able to plank for a minute
link |
or two minutes or three minutes,
link |
at some point you will fail.
link |
You're not going to fail because the heart gives out.
link |
You're not going to fail because you can't get enough oxygen
link |
because you can breathe while you're doing that.
link |
You're going to fail because of local muscular failure,
link |
which means that as you do,
link |
if you choose to do this protocol
link |
of three to five sets, et cetera, et cetera,
link |
to build muscular endurance,
link |
mainly what you are going to be building
link |
is you're going to be building
link |
the ability of your mitochondria to use oxygen
link |
to generate energy locally.
link |
And that it's something called mitochondrial respiration,
link |
respiration because of the involvement of oxygen.
link |
And it's also going to be increasing the extent
link |
to which the neurons control the muscles
link |
and provide a stimulus for the muscles to contract.
link |
But this is independent of power and strength, okay?
link |
So even though the low sets like three to five sets
link |
and the fact that you're doing repetitions
link |
and you're going to failure,
link |
even though it seems to resemble power and strength
link |
and hypertrophy type training, it is distinctly different.
link |
It's not going to generate strength, hypertrophy, and power.
link |
It's going to mainly create this ability to endure,
link |
to continually contract muscles or repeatedly contract
link |
Continually if you're using isometric holds,
link |
repeatedly, excuse me,
link |
if you're using repetition type exercise
link |
where there's a contraction and an extension of the muscle,
link |
essentially concentric and an eccentric portion.
link |
But remember that you want the eccentric portion
link |
to be light and relatively fast,
link |
not so fast that you injure yourself,
link |
but certainly not deliberately slowed down.
link |
It was recommended, I should say,
link |
by Andy Galpin that you not use Olympic lifts for this
link |
because once you get past eight or 12 or 25 repetitions,
link |
especially form on those Olympic lifts is key
link |
for not getting injured.
link |
And while some people can perform those sorts of lifts
link |
like snatches and deadlifts and cleans and jerks
link |
and overhead presses, probably not a great idea
link |
if the goal is to push the body to points of fatigue
link |
because you do open yourself up to injury
link |
unless you're very skilled at doing that
link |
or you have a really good coach
link |
who can help you guide through those lifts.
link |
So that's one form of endurance,
link |
which is muscular endurance.
link |
It's mainly going to rely on neural energy,
link |
so nerves and muscle.
link |
And it's not going to rely quite so much
link |
on what's available in your blood,
link |
your heart or your lungs.
link |
So now let's talk about the other extreme of endurance,
link |
which is long duration endurance.
link |
This is the type that people typically think about
link |
when they think about endurance.
link |
You're talking about a long run, a long swim,
link |
Well, anywhere from 12 minutes to several hours
link |
or maybe even an entire day,
link |
maybe eight or nine hours of hiking or running or biking.
link |
Some people are actually doing those kinds
link |
of really long events, marathons, for instance.
link |
So anything longer than 12 minutes.
link |
And this type of work builds on fuel utilization
link |
It builds on the activity of neurons in the brain
link |
that are involved in what we call central pattern generators.
link |
We talked about this in a previous episode
link |
or several previous episodes.
link |
These are groups of neurons that allow our body
link |
to engage in regular rhythmic effort
link |
without having to think about the movement too much.
link |
So running and stepping or swimming,
link |
if you already know how to swim or pedaling on a bike
link |
or walking upstairs and hiking,
link |
you're not thinking about right, left, right, left.
link |
It's all carried out by central pattern generators.
link |
This is going to be at less than 100%
link |
of your maximum oxygen uptake, your VO2 max.
link |
I'll talk about what VO2 max is,
link |
but I just want to give a sense of what the protocol is
link |
and the underlying science.
link |
Long duration effort is one set of 12 minutes or longer.
link |
So you're not counting repetitions.
link |
I sure hope that if you're going out on a 30 minute run
link |
or even a 15 minute run, that you're not counting steps,
link |
that you're not counting pedal strokes,
link |
that you're not on the rower counting pulls on the rower.
link |
I suppose you could,
link |
but I think that would be pretty dreadful.
link |
It seems like a poor utilization of cognitive brain space.
link |
You're getting into regular repeated effort
link |
and your ability to continue that effort
link |
is going to be dependent mainly
link |
on the efficiency of the movement,
link |
on your ability to strike a balance
link |
between the movement itself,
link |
the generation of the muscular movements that are required
link |
and fuel utilization across the different sources
link |
of nerve, muscle, blood, heart, and lungs.
link |
So let's ask the question, why would you fail on a long run?
link |
Why would you quit?
link |
Well, as you set out on that long run,
link |
assuming you have some glycogen in your liver
link |
and in your muscles, you're going to use that energy first,
link |
even if it's very low intensity.
link |
In case we're not talking about sprinting,
link |
we're talking about heading out the door
link |
or starting off on a marathon.
link |
You're starting to, assuming you have some conditioning
link |
or even if you don't, you're going to burn carbohydrate.
link |
You're going to burn glucose in the bloodstream.
link |
You're going to burn carbohydrate
link |
as those muscles contract,
link |
those what we call slow twitch muscles.
link |
They're contracting, they start burning up fuel
link |
to make ATP to continue to contract.
link |
Your mind is going to use more or less energy
link |
depending on how much willpower,
link |
how much of a fight you have to get into with yourself
link |
in order to generate the effort.
link |
I really want to underscore this.
link |
If you're somebody that's thinking,
link |
maybe I go for the run, maybe I don't go for the run,
link |
and I'll do it at two o'clock, okay, 2.05.
link |
No, I only want to go on the half hour
link |
or maybe on the main hour.
link |
And you're going through all that, guess what?
link |
You're burning up useful energy
link |
that you could use either for the run, for example,
link |
or for something else.
link |
When we think about something hard, when we ruminate,
link |
when we perseverate on an idea or on a decision,
link |
we are burning neural energy
link |
and neural energy is glucose and epinephrine
link |
and all the things we talked about before.
link |
So willpower in part is the ability to devote resources
link |
to things and part of that is making decisions
link |
to just either do it or not do it.
link |
I'm not of the just do it mindset.
link |
I think there's a right time and a place to train,
link |
but I also think that it is not good.
link |
In other words, it utilizes excessive resources
link |
to churn over decisions excessively,
link |
and you probably burn as much cognitive energy
link |
deciding about whether or not to do a given training or not
link |
as you do in the actual training, okay?
link |
So we'll talk more about how this long duration effort
link |
can relate to mental performance,
link |
but the long duration effort should be one set,
link |
12 minutes or longer.
link |
It could go for 30 minutes or 60 minutes or an hour.
link |
We'll talk about programming later in the episode.
link |
This is going to be less than 100%
link |
of your maximum oxygen uptake.
link |
Your heart rate is not going to be through the ceiling
link |
or maxed out, but it's all about efficiency of movement.
link |
That's what you're building.
link |
When you go out for a run that's 30 minutes,
link |
you are building the capacity to repeat that performance
link |
the next time while being more efficient,
link |
actually burning less fuel, and that might seem
link |
a little bit counterintuitive,
link |
but every time you do that run,
link |
what you're doing is you're building up
link |
mitochondrial density.
link |
It's not so much about mitochondrial oxidation
link |
You're building up mitochondrial density.
link |
You're actually increasing the amount of ATP
link |
that you can create for a given bout of effort.
link |
You're becoming more efficient, okay?
link |
You're burning less fuel overall, doing the same thing.
link |
That's really what these long slow distance
link |
or long bouts of effort are really all about.
link |
Now, why do this long duration effort?
link |
Why would you want to do it?
link |
Why is it good for you?
link |
Well, it does something very important,
link |
which is that it builds the capillary beds within muscles.
link |
So let's talk a little bit about vasculature.
link |
We haven't done this too much yet,
link |
but if you have seen the episode
link |
on supercharging performance,
link |
we talked about AVAs, these arteriovenous osteomoses,
link |
where blood moves from arteries directly into veins,
link |
but that's unusual.
link |
That only takes place in the so-called glabrous skin
link |
of the palms, the face, and the bottoms of the feet.
link |
Typically, for most all other areas of the body,
link |
what happens is arteries bring blood to a given tissue,
link |
like a muscle, and veins return that blood back to the heart.
link |
There are exceptions, but in general,
link |
and in between arteries and veins are these little tiny,
link |
what are called capillary beds or microcapillaries.
link |
So these are tiny little avenues,
link |
like little tiny streams and estuaries
link |
between the bigger arteries and veins.
link |
Now, those are actually contained within muscle,
link |
and what's amazing is that you can increase
link |
the number of them.
link |
You can literally build new capillaries.
link |
You can create new little streams within your muscles,
link |
and the type of long-duration effort
link |
that I was talking about before,
link |
12 minutes or more of steady effort,
link |
is very useful for doing that,
link |
and is very useful for increasing the mitochondria,
link |
the energy-producing elements of the cells,
link |
the actual muscle cells,
link |
and the reason is when blood arrives to muscles,
link |
the muscles are going to use some of that oxygen,
link |
and then some of the deoxygenated blood
link |
is going to be sent back to the heart and to the lungs.
link |
Now, the more capillaries that you build into those muscles,
link |
the more oxygen available to those muscles.
link |
I don't want to get too much into the physics of fluid flow,
link |
but basically it's the difference between taking a hose
link |
and sticking it into some dirt just directly,
link |
and turning on the faucet at a given rate,
link |
the spigot rather,
link |
or having a bunch of little hoses like a sprinkler system
link |
that go out and irrigate the whole yard.
link |
The irrigation is equivalent to this capillary bed system,
link |
and it's very good at using energy sources within blood.
link |
So the simple way to think about this is
link |
when you go out for a run,
link |
let's say it's the first run you've done for a while,
link |
and you go out for 12 or 15 minutes,
link |
and somewhere right around 20 minutes,
link |
you're like, that's it, I just can't continue.
link |
Well, when you come back the next time to do that run,
link |
you've built endurance,
link |
largely because you've built these capillary beds,
link |
you've expanded these little streams
link |
in which blood can deliver oxygen to the muscles.
link |
And so it's going to feel relatively straightforward
link |
to either go a little bit quicker for the same duration,
link |
the same distance,
link |
or to extend that run for another five to 10 minutes.
link |
So this long duration work, unlike muscular endurance,
link |
like planks and everything that we were talking about before
link |
is really about building the capillary systems
link |
and the mitochondria, the energy utilization systems
link |
within the muscles themselves.
link |
And that's very important to understand.
link |
It's distinctly different than say,
link |
building the neurons that fire the muscles.
link |
The neurons are already there,
link |
they're going to fire those muscles just fine.
link |
In fact, if your life depended on it today,
link |
you could probably run a marathon.
link |
You'd probably get injured,
link |
it would be very psychologically and physically painful,
link |
I don't recommend you do that unless you're trained for it.
link |
But if you were to train properly for it,
link |
if you were to do long duration bouts of effort
link |
once or twice a week, or three times a week,
link |
pretty soon it would become easy
link |
because you're building these vascular microbeds
link |
or microvascular beds as they're called.
link |
Okay, so you're able to bring more energy to the muscles
link |
and they're able to utilize more energy.
link |
So that's long duration.
link |
So we've got muscular endurance
link |
and we've got long duration endurance.
link |
And then there are two kinds in between
link |
that in recent years have gotten a lot of attention
link |
but most people are not distinguishing
link |
between these two kinds of endurance.
link |
And that's a shame because in failing to distinguish
link |
between the two kinds of what we call
link |
high intensity training,
link |
sometimes called high intensity interval training,
link |
most people, perhaps you,
link |
are not getting nearly as much physical and mental benefit
link |
out of high intensity training as you could.
link |
So I want to talk about the two kinds
link |
of high intensity interval training
link |
and what each of them does for your brain and body
link |
and what sorts of adaptations they cause,
link |
because in doing that,
link |
you can really start to build up specific energy systems
link |
in your brain and body in ways that best serve you
link |
for your cognitive work
link |
and for other sorts of things like strength and speed
link |
or hypertrophy or for running marathons for that matter.
link |
So there are two kinds of high intensity training
link |
sometimes called high intensity interval training.
link |
One is anaerobic, so-called anaerobic endurance,
link |
and the other is aerobic endurance,
link |
both of which qualify as HIIT,
link |
high intensity interval training.
link |
So let's talk about anaerobic endurance first.
link |
Anaerobic endurance from a protocol perspective
link |
is going to be three to 12 sets, okay?
link |
And these repetitions,
link |
and I'll talk about what the repetitions are,
link |
are going to be performed at whatever speed
link |
allows you to complete the work in good, safe form, okay?
link |
So it could be fast, it could be slow.
link |
As the work continues,
link |
your repetitions may slow down or it may speed up.
link |
Chances are it's going to slow down.
link |
So what does this work?
link |
What do these sets look like?
link |
Remember, long, slow distance is one set.
link |
Muscular endurance is three to five sets.
link |
High intensity anaerobic endurance
link |
is going to be somewhere between three and 12 sets.
link |
And it's going to have a ratio of work to rest
link |
of anywhere from three to one to one to five, okay?
link |
So what would a three to one ratio set look like?
link |
Well, it's going to be 30 seconds of hard pedaling
link |
on the bike, for instance, or running, or on the rower.
link |
These are just examples.
link |
It could be in the pool swimming.
link |
It could be any number of things or air squats
link |
or weighted squats, if you will,
link |
provided you can manage that.
link |
30 seconds on, 10 seconds off.
link |
That's a very brief rest.
link |
So three to one is just a good example
link |
would be 30 seconds on, 10 seconds off.
link |
The opposite extreme on that ratio would be one to five.
link |
So 20 seconds on, 100 seconds off.
link |
So you do the work for 20 seconds,
link |
then you rest 100 seconds.
link |
Now what's the difference?
link |
Should you do three to one ratio?
link |
So 30 seconds on, 10 seconds off,
link |
or should you do one to five,
link |
20 seconds on to 100 seconds off?
link |
Well, that will depend on whether or not
link |
the quality of the movement is important to you.
link |
So let's just take a look at the three to one ratio.
link |
So in the three to one ratio,
link |
if you're going to do 30 seconds of hard pedaling on a bike
link |
followed by 10 seconds,
link |
so maybe one of these, what they call assault bikes,
link |
and then you stop for 10 seconds and then repeat,
link |
chances are you will be able to do one, two, three, four,
link |
maybe even as many as 12 sets
link |
if you're really in good condition,
link |
that you'll be able to do all those
link |
because pedaling on the bike doesn't require a ton of skill.
link |
And if you do it incorrectly,
link |
if your elbow flares out a little bit or something,
link |
it's very unlikely that you'll get injured
link |
unless it's really extreme, okay?
link |
But the same movement done, for instance, with kettlebells,
link |
so 30 seconds on, 10 seconds off,
link |
the first set will probably be in good form.
link |
The second one will be in pretty good form,
link |
but let's say you're getting to the fifth and sixth set
link |
and you're going 30 seconds on, 10 seconds off,
link |
chances are the quality of your repetitions
link |
will degrade significantly
link |
and you increase the probability
link |
that you're going to get injured
link |
or that you're going to damage yourself in some way
link |
or that you can't complete the movement
link |
or that some smaller muscles
link |
like your grip muscles might give out, okay?
link |
So the quality of repetitions is going to drop
link |
considerably with the three-to-one approach.
link |
If you're just doing it for effort,
link |
and we'll talk about what this builds in your system
link |
in a moment, that's fine.
link |
But for most people, if quality of form is important,
link |
so maybe this is using weights, maybe you're doing squats,
link |
so you're going to do 20 seconds on and 100 seconds of rest,
link |
maybe it's even a barbell-loaded squat,
link |
maybe you're doing kettlebells,
link |
maybe you've got some other resistance there
link |
that's allowing you to do this,
link |
what you'll find is that the longer rest,
link |
even though it's 20 seconds of intense effort
link |
followed by a longer rest of about 100 seconds
link |
will allow you to perform more quality repetitions
link |
So what does building anaerobic endurance look like?
link |
And then I'll tell you what it's actually good for
link |
in the true practical sense.
link |
What anaerobic endurance exercise generally looks like
link |
is that if you decide to do this for the first week,
link |
you might do this two or three times a week,
link |
maybe even just once a week,
link |
depending on the other things you're doing,
link |
we'll talk about programming at the end,
link |
and you would generate just three sets,
link |
so it might be three sets of 20 seconds of hard effort
link |
followed by 100 seconds rest,
link |
then you repeat 20 seconds of hard effort,
link |
100 seconds rest, 20 seconds of effort, 100 seconds rest,
link |
and you might do that twice a week,
link |
and then each week you're adding one or two sets, okay?
link |
In doing that, you will build up
link |
what we call anaerobic endurance.
link |
What is anaerobic endurance?
link |
Well, let's ask why we fail.
link |
Anaerobic endurance is going to be taking your system
link |
into greater than 100% of your VO2 max.
link |
It's going to be taking your heart rate up very high,
link |
and it's going to maximize your oxygen utilization systems.
link |
That is going to have effects
link |
that are going to lead to fatigue
link |
at some point in the workout,
link |
and that fatigue will trigger an adaptation,
link |
so let's ask what adaptation it's triggering.
link |
Well, it's triggering both mitochondrial respiration,
link |
the ability of your mitochondria to generate more energy
link |
by using more oxygen because you're bringing so,
link |
you're maxing out,
link |
literally you're getting above your VO2 max.
link |
You're hitting that threshold of how much oxygen
link |
you can use in your system.
link |
One of the adaptations will be that your mitochondria
link |
will shift such that they can use more oxygen,
link |
and you're going to also increase the capillary beds,
link |
but not as much as you're going to be able
link |
to increase the amount of neuron engagement of muscle.
link |
So normally when we start to hit fatigue,
link |
when we're exhausted, when we're breathing really hard,
link |
because the systems of the body are linked
link |
and there's a mental component to this as well,
link |
a kind of motivational component,
link |
after that third or fourth or sixth set of,
link |
20 seconds on, 100 seconds off,
link |
or if you're at the other extreme,
link |
30 seconds on and 10 seconds off,
link |
there's going to be a component of you want to stop
link |
and by pushing through and repeating another set safely,
link |
of course, what you're doing is you're training the neurons
link |
to be able to access more energy,
link |
literally convert that into ATP and for the muscles
link |
therefore to access more energy and ATP,
link |
and the adaptation is in the mitochondria's ability
link |
to use oxygen, and this has tremendous carryover effects
link |
for other types of exercise.
link |
So while I know and appreciate that people
link |
are using high-intensity interval training
link |
of this kind or similar in order to just like burn fat,
link |
do their workouts, quote unquote,
link |
it's very useful for building a capacity
link |
to engage in short bouts of effort repeatedly,
link |
to really lock in, I don't want to use the word focus
link |
because it's not strictly mental focus,
link |
but to be able to generate short bouts of very intense work.
link |
This can be beneficial in competitive sports or team sports
link |
where there's a sprinting component,
link |
where the field opens up and you need to dribble the ball
link |
down the field, for instance, and shoot on goal,
link |
or where you're playing tennis and it's a long rally
link |
and then all of a sudden somebody really starts
link |
putting you back on your heels
link |
and you have to really make the maximum amount of effort
link |
to run to the net and to get the ball across the net,
link |
things of that sort, okay?
link |
There are a variety of places where there's carryover
link |
from this type of training, but it does support endurance.
link |
It's about muscle endurance.
link |
It's about these muscles ability to generate a lot of force
link |
in the short term, but repeatedly, okay?
link |
So that's the way to conceptualize this.
link |
And it is different than maximum power.
link |
Even though it feels like maximum effort,
link |
it is not the same as building power and speed into muscles.
link |
Those are distinctly different protocols.
link |
So the key elements, again,
link |
are that you're bringing your breathing
link |
and your oxygen utilization way up above your max.
link |
It's not quite hitting failure,
link |
but you're really pushing the system to the point
link |
where you are not ready to do another set
link |
and yet you begin another set.
link |
You're not necessarily psychologically ready.
link |
I'll talk more about some of the adaptations
link |
that this causes in terms of stroke volume
link |
in a few minutes when we talk about
link |
how it is that work of this sort
link |
can increase our heart's ability to deliver blood
link |
and oxygen to our lungs and other tissues.
link |
I'm going to get very specific about how to breathe
link |
during these different types of protocols
link |
and what's happening at the level of the heart.
link |
But I want to make sure I touch on the fourth protocol,
link |
which is high-intensity aerobic conditioning.
link |
So HIIT has these two forms, anaerobic and aerobic.
link |
And you just heard about anaerobic.
link |
High-intensity aerobic conditioning
link |
also involves about three to 12 sets starting off,
link |
of course, with fewer sets
link |
as you're getting into this training
link |
and then extending into more sets
link |
as one parameter you could expand.
link |
Has, again, the same ratio of three to one,
link |
so 30 seconds on, 10 seconds off, or one to five,
link |
20 seconds on, 100 seconds off,
link |
or a very powerful tool for building up aerobic conditioning
link |
is a one-to-one ratio.
link |
A one-to-one ratio is powerful
link |
for building, on average,
link |
most of the energy systems involving,
link |
remember, we had these nerve, muscle, blood,
link |
A one-to-one ratio might be you run a mile
link |
and however long that takes,
link |
let's say it takes you six minutes or seven minutes,
link |
then you rest for an equivalent amount of time,
link |
and then you rest for an equivalent amount of time.
link |
So you might run, first mile is, let's say, seven minutes,
link |
then you rest for seven minutes,
link |
then you run a mile again,
link |
and it might take eight minutes,
link |
and you rest for eight minutes,
link |
and you continue that for a total of four miles of work,
link |
for four miles of running work, I should say,
link |
or seven miles of work.
link |
You can build this up.
link |
Many people find that using this type of training
link |
allows them to do things like go run half marathons
link |
and marathons, even though prior to the race date,
link |
they've never actually run a half marathon or marathon.
link |
Now, that might seem incredible.
link |
It's like, how could it be that running a mile on
link |
and then resting for an equivalent amount of time,
link |
running a mile, resting for equivalent amount of time
link |
for seven miles allows you to run continuously
link |
for 13 miles or for 26 miles?
link |
Well, I'm not discouraging people
link |
from ever doing the long duration endurance.
link |
I think that is very important,
link |
but it's because it builds up
link |
so many of these energy utilization systems.
link |
It really teaches you to engage, excuse me,
link |
the nerve to muscle firing.
link |
It improves ATP and mitochondrial function in muscle.
link |
It allows the blood to deliver more oxygen
link |
to the muscle and to your brain.
link |
And I'll explain how that is.
link |
And it allows your heart to deliver more oxygen overall.
link |
And it builds a tremendous lung capacity.
link |
And we will talk about exactly how to breathe
link |
and how to build lung capacity,
link |
both for sake of warming up and for performance.
link |
So what would this look like
link |
and when should you do this?
link |
Well, it's really a question for these workouts
link |
of asking how much work can one do in eight to 12 minutes?
link |
And then rest and then repeat.
link |
How much work can you do for eight to 12 minutes,
link |
then rest and then repeat?
link |
And how many times should you do this?
link |
Well, this is the sort of thing, it's pretty intense.
link |
And so you would probably only want to do this
link |
two, maybe three times a week
link |
if you're not doing many other things.
link |
I will talk about how this program can be moved in
link |
with other forms of training,
link |
but I'll just give you a little hint now.
link |
And it's described in the review article referred to,
link |
and we will link another article as well.
link |
That concurrent training, doing strength training
link |
and the endurance training of any of the four kinds
link |
that I'm describing today can be done.
link |
You can program those in the same week,
link |
but you want to get four and ideally six
link |
or even better 24 hours between these workouts
link |
because it is very hard, for instance,
link |
to do a one-to-one mile repeats
link |
like run a mile, rest for equivalent time,
link |
run a mile, rest for equivalent time,
link |
to do that two or three times a week
link |
and also do weight training before
link |
or do a long run afterwards.
link |
That would quickly lead to breakdown for most people
link |
unless you have very, very good energy utilization systems.
link |
You're a really kind of advanced or elite athlete
link |
and or dare I say you're using tools
link |
to enhance your performance at the level of blood
link |
And I'm actually going to talk about those at the end
link |
and why they work.
link |
So we have four kinds of endurance, muscular endurance.
link |
We have long duration endurance.
link |
We have high intensity interval training of two kinds,
link |
anaerobic and aerobic.
link |
And this last type, the aerobic one works best it seems
link |
if you kind of do this one-to-one ratio.
link |
So how would you use these and what are they actually doing?
link |
Let's talk about the heart and the lungs and oxygen
link |
because that's something that we can all benefit
link |
from understanding.
link |
And it will become very clear in that discussion
link |
why this type of training is very useful
link |
even for non-athletes in order to improve oxygenation
link |
and energy utilization of the brain and the heart.
link |
The brain and the heart are probably
link |
the two most important systems
link |
that you need to take care of in your life.
link |
Yes, your musculature needs to be maintained.
link |
If you want to build it, that's up to you,
link |
but you should try and maintain your musculature
link |
but maintaining or enhancing a brain function
link |
and cardiovascular function.
link |
It's absolutely clear our key for health and longevity
link |
in the short and long-term.
link |
And the sorts of training I talked about today
link |
has been shown again and again and again
link |
to be very useful for enhancing the strength of the mind.
link |
Yes, I'll talk about that.
link |
As well as the health of the brain and the body.
link |
So let's talk about the sorts of adaptations
link |
that are happening in your brain and body
link |
that are so beneficial in these different forms of training.
link |
If you are breathing hard and your heart is beating hard,
link |
so this would be certainly in the high-intensity anaerobic
link |
and aerobic conditioning,
link |
because you're getting up near your VO2 max
link |
in high-intensity aerobic conditioning,
link |
and you're exceeding your VO2 max
link |
in high-intensity anaerobic conditioning,
link |
what's going to happen is,
link |
as of course your heart beats faster,
link |
your blood is going to be circulating faster in principle.
link |
Oxygen utilization in muscles is going to go up.
link |
And over time, not long, very quickly,
link |
what will happen when those capillary beds
link |
start to expand, we talked about that.
link |
But in addition, because of the amount of blood
link |
that's being returned to the heart,
link |
when you engage in these really intense bouts of effort,
link |
repeatedly, the amount of blood being returned to the heart
link |
actually causes an eccentric loading
link |
of one of the muscular walls of the heart.
link |
So your heart is muscle, it's cardiac muscle.
link |
We have skeletal muscle attached to our bones
link |
and we have cardiac muscle, which is our heart.
link |
When more blood is being returned to the heart
link |
because of the additional work
link |
that your muscles and nerves are doing,
link |
it actually has the effect of creating an eccentric loading,
link |
a kind of pushing of the wall, the left wall.
link |
I realize I'm not using the strict anatomy here,
link |
but I don't want to get into all the features of,
link |
the structural features of the heart.
link |
But the left ventricle essentially getting slammed back
link |
and then having to push back
link |
in a kind of eccentric loading of the cardiac muscle
link |
and the muscle thickens,
link |
but not because the heart thickens overall,
link |
it's actually a strengthening of the cardiac muscle
link |
in a way that increases what we call stroke volume.
link |
Meaning as more blood is returned to the heart,
link |
there's an adaptation where the heart muscle
link |
actually gets stronger and therefore can pump more blood
link |
per stroke, per beat.
link |
And as it does that, it delivers,
link |
because blood contains glucose and oxygen and other things,
link |
it delivers more fuel to your muscles,
link |
which allows you to do yet more work per unit time.
link |
So when we hear that, oh, so-and-so has a,
link |
or maybe you have a nice low heart rate
link |
that maybe you're one of these really extreme folks
link |
like 30 or 40 beats per minute,
link |
although most people are sitting at 50, 60, 70, 80,
link |
that's your resting heart rate.
link |
If you exercise regularly
link |
and you do long duration aerobic work,
link |
your heart rate will start to go down,
link |
your resting heart rate.
link |
It will increase the stroke volume of your heart.
link |
If you do this high intensity type training
link |
where your heart is beating very hard,
link |
so maybe the one-to-one ratio mile run repeats
link |
that I described a minute ago,
link |
let's say you do that twice a week for three or four,
link |
and I said it could go all the way up to 12 sets,
link |
which is a lot, I don't recommend people start there.
link |
Pretty soon, the stroke volume of your heart
link |
will really increase, and as a consequence,
link |
you can deliver more fuel to your muscles and to your brain,
link |
and you will notice that you can do more work,
link |
meaning you can do the same work you were doing a few days
link |
or weeks ago with relative ease.
link |
Your cognitive functioning will improve.
link |
This has been shown again and again
link |
because there's an increase in vasculature,
link |
literally capillary beds within the brain,
link |
the hippocampus areas that support memory,
link |
but also areas of the brain that support respiration,
link |
that support focus, that support effort.
link |
This isn't often discussed,
link |
but the ability to deliver more blood
link |
and therefore more glucose,
link |
remember neurons run on glucose and oxygen to the brain
link |
is a big feature of why exercise of the kind I'm describing
link |
helps with brain function.
link |
Now, weight training does have some positive effects
link |
on brain function also.
link |
When I say weight training, I'm really,
link |
I should be more specific,
link |
I really am referring to strength and hypertrophy training.
link |
Strength and hypertrophy training,
link |
especially if it's of the sort where you get into the burn,
link |
as we talked about last episode,
link |
and you start generating lactate as a hormonal signal
link |
that can benefit your brain, et cetera,
link |
it can have positive effects on the brain.
link |
And frankly, there haven't been as many studies
link |
of resistance training,
link |
strength and hypertrophy training on brain function,
link |
mainly because most of those experiments
link |
are done in mice or primates, non-human primates,
link |
and it's hard to get mice to do resistance training, okay?
link |
It's hard to get humans to do resistance training.
link |
It's definitely hard to get mice to do resistance training.
link |
There are ways to do it,
link |
but it's hard to get them to do, say,
link |
three sets of eight on the deadlift
link |
and then do some curls and then do some chin ups
link |
and this kind of thing, okay?
link |
It's pretty easy to get a mouse to run on a treadmill
link |
and you can set the tension on that treadmill
link |
to make it so that it's easier or harder
link |
for the mouse to turn that wheel.
link |
So that's one of the reasons.
link |
However, it's very clear
link |
and you should now understand intuitively
link |
why the kind of standard strength
link |
and hypertrophy type workouts
link |
are not going to activate the blood oxygenation
link |
and the stroke volume increases for the heart
link |
that the sorts of training I'm talking about today will,
link |
it just doesn't have the same positive effects.
link |
Now, that isn't to say that if you just weight train,
link |
that you'll be dumb
link |
or that you'll lose your memory over time.
link |
You might, but it is to say that endurance work,
link |
in particular, the high intensity and long duration work
link |
that I've talked about today,
link |
the two high intensity protocols and the long duration work
link |
has been shown again and again and again
link |
to have positive effects on brain function,
link |
not through the addition of new neurons.
link |
Sorry to break it to you,
link |
but that's not a major event
link |
in the exercised or non-exercised human brain
link |
for reasons we can talk about in a future episode,
link |
but it still has many positive effects
link |
through the delivery of things like IGF-1,
link |
but also just through plain oxygenation of the brain
link |
and the way it promotes the development of microvasculature
link |
to develop, excuse me, to deliver neurons more nutrients.
link |
If neurons don't get oxygen and glucose, they do die,
link |
unless there's another fuel source like ketones,
link |
which can replace the glucose.
link |
If you don't give oxygen to neurons,
link |
if you don't deliver enough to them,
link |
you get what's called ischemia,
link |
you get little micro strokes.
link |
So the type of exercise I'm talking about today
link |
in generating intense heart rate increases,
link |
provided that's safe for you to do, breathing hard,
link |
that's going to deliver oxygen and blood,
link |
increase stroke volume of the heart,
link |
and is going to improve brain function.
link |
This has been supported by many,
link |
many quality peer reviewed studies.
link |
So that's one form of positive adaptation.
link |
I also talked about just sort of performance adaptations,
link |
how doing high intensity aerobic conditioning
link |
of the, you know, mile repeats type training
link |
can actually improve your ability
link |
to do long bouts of intense work.
link |
It also seems like it dovetails
link |
or is compatible with resistance training
link |
that's aimed towards strength and hypertrophy.
link |
Now in full disclosure, the data seemed to indicate
link |
that if people just weight train or train for strength,
link |
so three reps, rest five minutes,
link |
three reps of heavy weights, et cetera,
link |
yeah, you'll get much stronger than you would
link |
if you're doing things like, you know,
link |
five repetitions up to 12 or 12 to 25 reps,
link |
and you're, you know, and you're going out for long jogs.
link |
There's always going to be a compromise
link |
in adaptations, unfortunately.
link |
It does seem like you can do concurrent training,
link |
as I mentioned before, if you allow anywhere from four
link |
to six or ideally 24 hours between workouts.
link |
As I mentioned in the previous episode,
link |
if you want to know if you are recovered from a workout,
link |
a great way to do that is to apply
link |
the carbon dioxide tolerance test,
link |
which is four breaths in and out, inhale, exhale,
link |
inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale,
link |
then a big inhale, and then a slow controlled exhale.
link |
If that slow controlled exhale is 60 seconds or longer,
link |
it means that your parasympathetic,
link |
your calming nervous system is under your control,
link |
and it's likely, I should say likely,
link |
that systemically your whole nervous system has recovered
link |
from whatever it is that you've been doing
link |
and experiencing in life, including work and relationships.
link |
If not, you might want to take a rest day, dare I say,
link |
or Costello is on his, what, he's 10 now,
link |
I think he's on his 12,000th rest day.
link |
Most people need, I should say,
link |
one to two full rest days per week.
link |
I know there are people who are going to say,
link |
that's ridiculous, and okay,
link |
maybe you have amazing recovery abilities.
link |
Also depends on training intensity.
link |
Many people benefit from having one or two
link |
full rest days per week, at least one.
link |
Some people don't need to,
link |
but if you are not able to extend that exhale
link |
on the carbon dioxide tolerance test
link |
past 60 seconds or so, 45 seconds, 60 seconds,
link |
chances are your so-called sympathetic nervous system,
link |
your stress system is chronically elevated
link |
and you're not really putting the brake
link |
on that system enough, and that's a subconscious thing.
link |
There are ways that you can accelerate recovery,
link |
but I would encourage you to listen to the previous episode.
link |
It's timestamped for how to assess recovery.
link |
So how often to program these things
link |
will depend on the other things you're doing.
link |
I think it's perfectly reasonable
link |
to do this type of training with other types of training,
link |
and I'll talk about a variety of combinations of those
link |
toward the end of the episode.
link |
I do want to talk about how to deliver
link |
more energy and oxygen.
link |
These are tools that are extremely useful, I believe,
link |
and that are grounded in physiology.
link |
The three things I'd like to talk about
link |
are how to breathe,
link |
what to do immediately after training, and hydration.
link |
And I promise I will get back into programming
link |
and sort of protocols, but these are vitally important
link |
to your ability to perform endurance work in particular,
link |
and they are grounded in how neurons and blood and oxygen
link |
and your heart work together.
link |
So let's first talk about breathing or respiration.
link |
We breathe a couple of different ways,
link |
but let's just remind ourselves why we breathe.
link |
We breathe to bring oxygen into our system,
link |
and we breathe to get rid of carbon dioxide.
link |
And we need both oxygen and carbon dioxide
link |
in order to utilize fuel and for our brain and body to work.
link |
It's not that oxygen is good and carbon dioxide is bad.
link |
They have to be present in the appropriate ratios.
link |
So one thing that is very clear
link |
is our ability to deliver oxygen to working muscles
link |
and to our brain is going to be important
link |
for our ability to generate muscular effort,
link |
especially of the kind I was talking about today,
link |
but also weight training
link |
and other forms of skill-based effort, et cetera,
link |
and our ability to think.
link |
If you're holding your breath for too long,
link |
if you're breathing too much,
link |
if you're what they call over-breathing or under-breathing,
link |
if you're shallow breathing, if you're mouth breathing,
link |
these are all things that can really impede
link |
mental and physical performance.
link |
So let's make it really simple,
link |
and then I promise to do a future episode
link |
all about respiration.
link |
There are two main sources of air for your body,
link |
and it's air coming in through your nose
link |
and air coming in through your mouth.
link |
In general, nasal breathing is better.
link |
It scrubs the air of bacteria and viruses.
link |
You have a microbiome in your nose that benefits.
link |
There are a number of reasons.
link |
It's also just a more efficient system, believe it or not.
link |
Even though it feels like you can gulp more air
link |
with your mouth, getting good at nasal breathing is useful.
link |
A gear system of the type that Brian McKenzie
link |
and colleagues have developed,
link |
I think is a good way to conceptualize this.
link |
If you're doing long duration work,
link |
try and do it all nasal breathing.
link |
If you have deviated septum,
link |
it's probably because you don't nasal breathe enough.
link |
Mouth breathing is something that many people suffer from.
link |
You're more prone to infections.
link |
It's not as efficient, et cetera.
link |
There is a place for mouth breathing.
link |
However, it's usually if you need to do a strong exhale,
link |
oftentimes you can discard more volume through the mouth
link |
unless you're very trained at nasal breathing.
link |
So if you're doing high intensity training,
link |
a good way to conceptualize this is to exhale
link |
on the max effort and then to inhale
link |
on the less intense part.
link |
So that might be as you're generating the movement,
link |
in the concentric part of the movement, you exhale, right?
link |
Just like on a bat swing or something like that,
link |
or fighters and martial artists do this differently
link |
depending on how they were trained
link |
and the different purposes, but the kind of like,
link |
or the kind of exhaling during the effort
link |
and then inhaling on the portion of the repetition
link |
that is not the highest effort portion.
link |
Usually that's the eccentric phase
link |
of anything involving weights or rowing
link |
and things of that sort.
link |
So nasal breathing is great,
link |
but as you increase the intensity of your endurance work,
link |
you will need to incorporate the mouth.
link |
So a gear system would look something like,
link |
first gear would be just nasal breathing
link |
or second gear would also be just nasal breathing,
link |
but with more effort.
link |
Third gear, again, power speed endurance
link |
has a lot more about this.
link |
You can go to their website.
link |
I think it's a very intelligent way to conceptualize this.
link |
As you go into more max effort,
link |
then you're going into third and fourth and fifth gear
link |
and at some point you're not thinking about nose or mouth.
link |
You're just trying to hang on for dear life
link |
and complete the work safely.
link |
And that means breathe through whatever orifice
link |
So that's one aspect, nose versus mouth.
link |
The other aspect is whether or not you're using your ribs,
link |
the intercostal muscles are these muscles
link |
that the Bruce Lee had these remarkable
link |
intercostal muscles that allow you to lift the rib cage
link |
or the diaphragm, which is a skeletal muscle
link |
that sits below the lungs.
link |
Just to remind you, when you inhale, the diaphragm moves down
link |
when you exhale, the diaphragm moves up.
link |
Here's something that most people don't do
link |
and would benefit tremendously from.
link |
And I can say this because Andy Galpin's lab
link |
has done work on this, exploring how warming up
link |
the intercostals and the nerve to diaphragm pathways
link |
before any kind of endurance work,
link |
or in the first few minutes of endurance work
link |
can allow you to breathe more deeply
link |
and to deliver more oxygen to the blood and, excuse me,
link |
and to the muscles and to be able to do more work
link |
So what that involves is sometimes sitting,
link |
sometimes standing and just really concentrating
link |
We always hear about how we should diaphragmatic breathe
link |
and that means our belly moves out when we inhale.
link |
So our stomach expands, but also expanding the intercostals,
link |
which means actually raising the ribs, chest breathing.
link |
We're all told that in yoga class,
link |
don't breathe with your chest this,
link |
but actually that is warming up the intercostal muscles.
link |
So this is also a great way to generate adrenaline
link |
if you do it a little bit intensely.
link |
So let's say you're feeling unmotivated to train.
link |
I don't particularly like doing endurance training
link |
until I'm actually doing it.
link |
So I use and benefit from having a practice
link |
where I'll just sit there and for about three minutes,
link |
I'll just breathe very deeply,
link |
trying to raise my chest as much as I can
link |
for maybe a minute and then expanding,
link |
contracting my diaphragm and expanding my stomach outward
link |
By the end of that,
link |
you're actually delivering more oxygen to your system.
link |
My lab has looked at this in a totally different context.
link |
Andy's lab has looked at it in the context
link |
of physical performance.
link |
So warming up the breathing muscles should make sense
link |
given that you now know that muscles and neurons
link |
need glucose and they need oxygen in order to function.
link |
And so that's a great warmup.
link |
You can also do this while walking
link |
or while getting on the bike and starting to pedal,
link |
really starting to think about
link |
warming up the breathing system.
link |
And then you can decide if you want to do pure nasal
link |
or a combination of nasal and mouth breathing and so on.
link |
So that's something that we don't often hear about.
link |
The other one, the other tool rather
link |
that I've talked about in a previous episode,
link |
I'll just mention again,
link |
is some people when they do endurance type work,
link |
they get a stitch in their side.
link |
They feel like they've got a side cramp.
link |
Very rarely is it actually a skeletal muscular cramp.
link |
It's oftentimes, it's a referenced pain
link |
of the phrenic nerve that innervates the liver.
link |
So the phrenic nerve is responsible
link |
for the movement of the diaphragm.
link |
It is a very important system,
link |
but it has a number of what we call collateral.
link |
So it branches to other organs, runs over other organs.
link |
Sometimes when we're breathing shallow
link |
and we are in physical motion
link |
and we're engaging in physical effort,
link |
we'll feel that side stitch and we think,
link |
oh, I've got a cramp, or maybe I'm dehydrated,
link |
or maybe I need to run with my hands over my head.
link |
Typically you can relieve that side cramp,
link |
which isn't a cramp at all,
link |
that side stitch by doing the double inhale, exhale,
link |
really breathing deeply,
link |
and then sneaking a little bit more air in.
link |
That's a double kind of firing,
link |
or what we call volley of action potentials
link |
sent from the phrenic nerve to the diaphragm,
link |
which will also activate that collateral,
link |
that branch literally of the nerve that innervates the liver.
link |
And then when you exhale,
link |
you offload a bunch of carbon dioxide.
link |
But if you repeat that a few times, often,
link |
in fact for me every time,
link |
but often what'll happen is that side stitch
link |
will just naturally disappear.
link |
It just means you're not breathing properly.
link |
The phrenic nerve is firing in a way
link |
that's kind of aggravating that referenced pain.
link |
There's nothing kind of voodoo or mysterious about this.
link |
It just has to do with the way
link |
that the different nerves travel in the body.
link |
So as you set out on your run,
link |
or maybe you're going to do some muscular endurance work
link |
or high-intensity work, warming up the intercostals,
link |
warming up the diaphragm is good.
link |
And there are exercises,
link |
there is work that you can do
link |
to strengthen the intercostals
link |
and to strengthen the diaphragm
link |
during bouts of this kind of effort.
link |
And I would say that one of the ways
link |
that you can do that best is by really focusing
link |
on getting the maximum diaphragmatic expansion
link |
and chest lifting, what we're all told now not to do.
link |
Don't chest breathe, belly breathe.
link |
The intercostals are there for a reason,
link |
and they are perfectly good at filling your lungs.
link |
They work best when they collaborate with your diaphragm.
link |
But when you are starting to fatigue,
link |
to start to really inhale deeply
link |
and try and really expand those
link |
to deliver more oxygen to your system.
link |
While we're talking about delivering more oxygen
link |
to your system, I want to share with you a useful tool
link |
that will now make total sense mechanistically
link |
why it works, which is oftentimes when we are on a long run
link |
or in long duration bouts of effort,
link |
we will hit the so-called wall, right?
link |
We will bonk, I think they used to call it,
link |
or maybe do they still call it that, Costello?
link |
We bonk, we just rethink, no, we can't continue.
link |
It's a curious thing as to whether or not that's neural
link |
or whether or not it's fuel-based.
link |
There's certainly going to be a psychological
link |
or motivational component,
link |
but one way that you can reveal this kind of extra gear,
link |
the capacity to push on is by understanding the way
link |
that different muscle fibers use energy differently.
link |
Remember the fast twitch phosphocreatine system
link |
and the slow twitch system that relies mainly
link |
on lipids and glucose.
link |
Okay, well, even if you don't remember all that,
link |
if you've been running steadily for a long time
link |
and you're starting to fatigue
link |
and you feel like it's time to quit,
link |
you may have not tapped into an alternative fuel source.
link |
One thing that you can do
link |
is you can actually increase your speed.
link |
This is also true of work where you're doing repetitions
link |
with kettlebells or something.
link |
You can start to increase your speed.
link |
So run faster, pedal faster, row faster, swim faster,
link |
not all out sprint, but in doing that,
link |
you're shifting the muscles and the nerves
link |
over towards utilizing a separate fuel source
link |
or a distinct fuel source.
link |
Maybe the phosphocreatine system,
link |
if it's a quick bout of intense acceleration,
link |
or maybe it's a combination of lipids and carbohydrates
link |
in your system that weren't available to you prior.
link |
Now, of course, if you completely deplete
link |
your liver glycogen, you completely deplete everything,
link |
you're only going to be running on stored fuel and fats
link |
and eventually you'll start metabolizing protein
link |
or muscles themselves.
link |
But this is a kind of a unique way to realize that,
link |
oh, you weren't out of energy at all,
link |
you were just over relying on one fuel source.
link |
And this is the reason why, especially elite athletes
link |
are starting to both rely on carbohydrates,
link |
so they're doing the whole carb depletion
link |
then carb loading thing,
link |
they're loading up their liver and their muscles
link |
with plenty of glycogen by eating pastas and rice
link |
and stuff before races,
link |
but they are also ingesting ketones during races,
link |
during long bouts of effort,
link |
because ketones can be a quick form of energy,
link |
there's no reason why you can't use ketones
link |
if they are taken exogenous ketones
link |
and carbohydrate and in combination.
link |
Remember the body is accustomed
link |
to using multiple fuel sources, fatty acids, carbohydrates,
link |
all these things, it's only in the kind of internet age
link |
that we think in terms of, oh, well, you're either keto
link |
or you're burning sugar or you're fat adapted
link |
or fat fasting or fast fasting or fat fadding,
link |
Costello woke up when I said fat fadding,
link |
I'm not talking about you Costello.
link |
So the point is that your body is used
link |
to using multiple fuel sources,
link |
so if you're kind of hitting that wall,
link |
sometimes accelerating can actually allow you
link |
to tap into a new fuel source
link |
or combination of fuel sources
link |
just based on the way that muscles use fuel,
link |
so that's another tool.
link |
The other thing that's really important to think about
link |
in terms of endurance type work is hydration,
link |
and I think hydration is important for all forms
link |
of physical work and exercise, not just endurance.
link |
The deal with hydration is that we've been taught
link |
about hydration all wrong,
link |
but let's remember what neurons work on,
link |
what do they use in order to fire?
link |
Well, they certainly need water, right?
link |
We need water in our system, I should say,
link |
but remember they use electrolytes, sodium and potassium
link |
to generate those action potentials
link |
to actually get neurons to contract,
link |
to be able, excuse me, muscles to contract
link |
and for our brain to function and to be able to think.
link |
Typically, typically we're going to lose anywhere
link |
from one to five pounds of water per hour of exercise,
link |
and that's going to vary tremendously,
link |
it's going to vary on weather,
link |
it's going to vary on intensity,
link |
probably more like five pounds if it's hot day
link |
and you're exercising very intensely,
link |
so about one to five pounds per hour.
link |
Now, you know how much you weigh,
link |
so if you think about your weight in pounds,
link |
once you lose about one to 4% of your body weight in water,
link |
you're going to experience about a 20 to 30% reduction
link |
in work capacity, in your ability to generate effort
link |
of any kind, strength, endurance, et cetera.
link |
You are also going to experience a significant drop
link |
in your ability to think and perform mental operations,
link |
so hydration is key.
link |
Now, many people have been told, well,
link |
if you urinate and your urine is clear,
link |
well, then you're hydrated enough.
link |
Sometimes that's true, sometimes that's not true.
link |
Also, and this is a topic I enjoy discussing,
link |
but urine is a biological phenomenon,
link |
it's actually filtered blood.
link |
Every once in a while, if there's a kid
link |
and it's a family friend, I'll say,
link |
did you know that your pee is actually filtered blood?
link |
And they usually kind of go wide-eyed,
link |
but then they go, oh, that's kind of cool,
link |
like kids have this natural curiosity
link |
about blood and pee and stuff
link |
that's not contaminated by our preconceived notions
link |
of those things being gross.
link |
Because urine being filtered blood
link |
can give you some indication
link |
as to whether or not you're hydrated enough or not.
link |
And in order to really assess that,
link |
it's not going to be sufficient
link |
to urinate into another volume of water
link |
and assess whether or not your urine
link |
is very dark or very light.
link |
It actually requires urinating into a small volume
link |
and saying, well, is it darker or lighter than before?
link |
It's not something you really want to do most places.
link |
The etiquette of most gyms and environments
link |
is not suitable for that.
link |
But one of the things that you can just do
link |
is you can figure, well,
link |
I'm going to lose one to five pounds of water per hour.
link |
You can show up to exercise reasonably hydrated
link |
with electrolytes.
link |
So potassium, sodium, and magnesium are really key.
link |
You can die from drinking too much water in particular
link |
because it forces you, if you drink too much water,
link |
you'll excrete too many electrolytes
link |
and your brain will shut off.
link |
You'll actually, your heart will stop functioning properly.
link |
So you don't want to over consume water
link |
to the extreme either.
link |
But there are a number of equations
link |
that go into figuring out how much water you need
link |
based on how intense your training,
link |
et cetera, body size, et cetera.
link |
Just remember, you burn, you lose, excuse me,
link |
about one to five pounds of water per hour,
link |
depending on how hot it is and how intensely you're exercising
link |
once your body weight drops by one to 4%.
link |
So you can just figure it,
link |
well, if you lose five pounds per hour,
link |
you exercise for two hours,
link |
let's say you're about 200 pounds, that's about 10%, okay?
link |
Well, you want to replace that very quickly
link |
or you want to replace that all along
link |
before you start experiencing this massive 20 or 30%
link |
reduction in work capacity of muscles and the brain.
link |
A simple formula, what I call the Galpin equation,
link |
hereafter referred to as the Galpin equation,
link |
is a formula that gets you close to the exact amount
link |
that you would want that Dr. Andy Galpin came up with,
link |
which is your body weight in pounds
link |
divided by the number 30.
link |
And that is how many ounces you should drink
link |
for every 15 minutes of exercise.
link |
So once again, the Galpin equation,
link |
your body weight in pounds divided by 30,
link |
that's the amount of fluid to drink in ounces, right?
link |
Every 15 minutes of exercise.
link |
Now, if you are sweating a lot, you may need more, okay?
link |
If you're already very well hydrated, you may need less,
link |
but that's a good rule of thumb to begin
link |
and to start to understand the relationship
link |
between hydration and performance.
link |
There is a phenomenon in which gastric emptying,
link |
the ability to move stuff out of your gut,
link |
including water and electrolytes out of your gut
link |
and into the bloodstream and for delivery
link |
to the tissues of your body for effort,
link |
is hindered when you get above 70% of your VO2 max.
link |
In other words, when you're doing high intensity training,
link |
sometimes people experience that ingesting water
link |
during intense training is difficult.
link |
It is something that can be actually trained up.
link |
It's a matter of learning to kind of relax
link |
your abdominal muscles.
link |
And there are some other aspects of adaptation
link |
that will allow you to drink during higher intensity work.
link |
As Galpin says, don't try and ingest fluids
link |
when you're working out or competing at higher
link |
than 70% of VO2 max, if you've never done it before,
link |
you want to train up this capacity.
link |
People can learn how to consume fluids during a race
link |
or consume fluids during bouts of exercise
link |
that are very intense.
link |
And a lot of people don't want to do that
link |
because they don't want to have to stop to urinate, et cetera.
link |
But given the crucial role of hydration
link |
for muscular performance and for brain performance,
link |
it seems that if you're going to be doing
link |
a lot of high intensity interval training
link |
of the various kinds I talked about today,
link |
or high intensity training of any kind,
link |
that hydration is key and learning,
link |
or in other words, getting your system to adapt
link |
to ingesting fluids in the middle of these workouts
link |
is something that seems beneficial, at least to me,
link |
in terms of the trade-off between being dehydrated
link |
and the somewhat discomfort of maybe drinking some fluids.
link |
So you sip small amounts of fluid initially,
link |
and then you're able to take bigger and bigger gulps
link |
as time goes on, and pretty soon you're able to drink
link |
mid-set or be, excuse me, not mid-set,
link |
please don't do that, between sets in your workout
link |
or while you're still breathing hard after a mile repeat
link |
or something of that sort without much disruption
link |
or any at all to your performance.
link |
Last episode, we talked about how to assess recovery
link |
and things that you might want to do to improve recovery,
link |
how exposure to ice baths and cold showers
link |
can reduce inflammation, which can be great for recovery.
link |
But can inhibit some of the adaptations
link |
for strength and hypertrophy
link |
because inflammation isn't good or bad.
link |
Inflammation isn't like a nice person or a mean person,
link |
It's a great thing for stimulating adaptations,
link |
but you don't want it around too long.
link |
And so we suggested that you not do ice baths
link |
within probably six hours of any training
link |
where the goal was hypertrophy or strength training.
link |
There is some evidence that getting yourself
link |
into an ice bath or cold shower after endurance training
link |
can actually improve the mitochondrial aspects
link |
of endurance exercise,
link |
that you can get improvements in mitochondrial density
link |
and you can get improvements in mitochondrial respiration
link |
by doing that afterwards
link |
and that it can facilitate recovery.
link |
That's still a bit of a controversial area.
link |
I do think that what I mentioned earlier,
link |
that waiting at least six hours
link |
and probably more like 24 hours between workouts
link |
is a good idea that getting at least one full day of rest
link |
each week, for some people that'll be two.
link |
I have to say, I'm one of these people
link |
that after two days of absolutely no exercise,
link |
I do perform better consistently
link |
across all aspects of physical performance
link |
and mentally, I feel better as well.
link |
Even though I loathe to take those days off,
link |
unless I'm really exhausted,
link |
it does seem to help my training.
link |
Some people can train seven days a week and they're fine.
link |
I think it just is, there's a lot of individual variation.
link |
You want to work on sleep
link |
and maximizing sleep for recovery, nutrition,
link |
of course, as well.
link |
I talked about sleep in the first four episodes
link |
If you have trouble with sleep,
link |
definitely check out those episodes.
link |
It's very clear and a number of sports teams,
link |
even some folks that I work with and Andy Galpin and others
link |
are starting to incorporate
link |
a what's called a parasympathetic down regulation
link |
after training of any kind as a way to accelerate recovery
link |
and enable you to do more work.
link |
In other words, get back to work out sooner.
link |
What is parasympathetic down regulation?
link |
It means finishing your training
link |
and instead of just hopping on the phone
link |
or hopping into your car
link |
and heading off to take five minutes minimum,
link |
maybe ideally more like 10 or 20,
link |
but for sake of time, five minutes minimum
link |
and doing just some slow, pure nasal,
link |
long exhale devoted breathing
link |
or lying down and just kind of zoning out.
link |
That it seems can accelerate recovery
link |
and allow you to get back into other types of work,
link |
mental work or physical work more quickly,
link |
which makes total sense
link |
because remember your nervous system
link |
and recovery and work is a local phenomenon.
link |
Which muscles were you using?
link |
Were you using your glutes, your hams and your back
link |
or were you using your shoulders, et cetera?
link |
But it's also a systemic thing.
link |
It's also about those neurons in the locus coeruleus
link |
that are releasing epinephrine.
link |
You want to quiet all that down after training.
link |
You want to really just zone out.
link |
Think Costello, channel your inner Costello
link |
and just mellow out for five to 20 minutes
link |
and then move into the rest of your day.
link |
Five minutes should be manageable
link |
even if it's just sitting in the car with your eyes closed
link |
doing that down regulation breathing.
link |
I think you'll see big benefits
link |
in terms of allowing yourself to come back sooner,
link |
do more work over time
link |
and just perform and feel better generally
link |
as well as be able to think about other things
link |
besides just how much the previous workout
link |
kind of beat you up.
link |
A couple more things I think are going to be useful
link |
and I do want to just pack these in
link |
because we are closing out the month on physical performance
link |
and that's about programming and about pacing
link |
and the kind of mental aspects of endurance.
link |
So let's start with pacing and mental aspects of endurance.
link |
I learned from a friend and colleague here at the podcast
link |
that who's very active in triathlon and marathon
link |
and another knows a lot about that whole world
link |
and the competitive landscape there
link |
that pacing and literally physical pacers
link |
of a laser on the ground or visualizing
link |
or having a pace car or a pace runner in front
link |
is actually not allowed in many competitions.
link |
And if those are present doesn't allow the race times
link |
to qualify as legitimate record holding times.
link |
And that's very interesting to me
link |
because what we know is that the visual system
link |
has this capacity to switch back and forth
link |
between what we call panoramic vision
link |
where we're not really focused on anything.
link |
Things are just flowing past us
link |
or our eyes are just kind of zoned out.
link |
So I can do this right now and you won't be able to tell
link |
but I'm looking at the corners of the room.
link |
I see Costello down there on the floor.
link |
I see my podcast team here and I can also see the microphone.
link |
I can see myself in this environment.
link |
That's panoramic vision.
link |
Whereas if I draw my eyes to one location
link |
like right there in the center of the camera
link |
it's what's called a vergence eye movement.
link |
So I'm contracting my visual window.
link |
The contraction of the visual window when that's done
link |
is the same thing that would happen
link |
if I was tracking say a pace car or a pace runner
link |
or a laser on the ground.
link |
The mirror bringing our eyes together
link |
to what we call a vergence point
link |
has the impact of triggering the activation
link |
of neural circuits in the thalamus.
link |
Things like Zona and Serta
link |
if you really want to know what their names are
link |
of these brain areas as well as in the brainstem
link |
that activate the so-called alertness system.
link |
Things like locus coeruleus.
link |
Whereas panoramic vision tends to bring us
link |
into states of relaxation.
link |
You can actually leverage this during your runs.
link |
Let's say you're out for a long run
link |
or you're swimming or you're cycling.
link |
This is probably easiest to imagine out of the water
link |
but you could probably do in the water as well.
link |
If you focus your attention on a landmark
link |
that you're going to run to,
link |
you'll find that it's much easier than if you don't
link |
actually have a set milestone or landmark
link |
that you're going to run to.
link |
However, if you were to continue that repeatedly
link |
just going milestone after milestone after milestone
link |
you would feel more mentally fatigued
link |
and you would actually be able
link |
to degenerate less work overall.
link |
One thing that can be useful is focusing on a milestone,
link |
running to that milestone or biking,
link |
whatever it is the activity happens to be
link |
and then dilating your field of view
link |
to relax the system and then continuing again.
link |
So it's this kind of active contraction
link |
or of the visual window
link |
and then dilation of the visual window.
link |
Contraction of the visual window
link |
allows you to generate more effort
link |
but there's a cost to doing that
link |
because neurons consume energy
link |
and now you know how they do that.
link |
Whereas dilation allows you
link |
to essentially be more efficient, right?
link |
Now pacing is not allowed or having a pacer, a visual pacer
link |
because it does allow you to access systems
link |
in the brain and body that allow you
link |
to create more energy, more effort.
link |
And so I find it interesting
link |
that I think in a kind of subconscious genius
link |
the race officials and the governing bodies
link |
of these races have said, okay, sure,
link |
having a pacer there or someone in front
link |
you can draft off of them.
link |
There's actually a kind of a aerodynamic effect
link |
of having someone in front of you that makes it easier
link |
to run in the wake of their air stream, so to speak.
link |
Same is true in cycling.
link |
This is why the cycling teams are so good
link |
at maneuvering in packs in very specific ways.
link |
You can go faster with less effort
link |
if you're drafting as it's called behind somebody.
link |
But as well, where you place your vision
link |
will allow you to generate more effort.
link |
And so it's interesting that they've taken out
link |
this kind of, if you will, performance enhancing tool.
link |
I imagine, and I have to imagine
link |
it's the appropriate word here,
link |
that good runners, good cyclists have the ability
link |
to create a kind of pacer in their mind's eye.
link |
I have to imagine that they're not just completely
link |
allowing their attention to drift,
link |
although they do that when they want to be
link |
in highly efficient mode generating effort
link |
without having to tax their mental capacity.
link |
And remember mental capacity is neural energy
link |
and consumes glucose, energy that they could devote
link |
to the functioning of their body,
link |
but that when needed that they can focus their energy in
link |
and actually kind of chase a mental pacer or pick milestones.
link |
So this is a mental game that you can play as well.
link |
It's a little bit hard to do in the context
link |
of weightlifting in the gym.
link |
It's more of a moving through space kind of thing.
link |
But some people do this by counting reps, et cetera.
link |
I think it's especially suitable
link |
for endurance type of exercise, especially done outside.
link |
One of the reasons I hate running on a treadmill
link |
is it just feels like it's never ending.
link |
And I've never tried one of these Peloton things.
link |
I try and avoid looking at screens as much
link |
as I possibly can.
link |
But if you try this next time you're out for a run or swim,
link |
what you'll find is that you have a capacity
link |
to engage a system of higher energy output
link |
when you focus your eyes on a particular location,
link |
but you want to use that judiciously
link |
because your goal of course is to become efficient
link |
at moving through space over time
link |
and not taxing your brain and body to the point
link |
where you arrive at the end of that,
link |
unless it's race day, just completely tapped out.
link |
So that's a kind of interesting aspect of running.
link |
If you're a fan of running, which I am,
link |
and you get the chance to look at any of the documentaries
link |
or docudramas made about, excuse me,
link |
about Steve Prefontaine,
link |
it was clear that he was mostly in a battle with himself,
link |
but that he was also a highly competitive individual.
link |
And you'll see this in some of his races.
link |
I do encourage you to look some of those up on YouTube
link |
or see the docudramas.
link |
They're quite good.
link |
Where he ran the, essentially it was 12 laps on a track.
link |
It's essentially the five, it is the 5,000 meter race,
link |
which is essentially three miles.
link |
And he essentially tried to sprint the whole thing,
link |
which is ridiculous.
link |
Actually knowing what you know today,
link |
you'll realize that Steve Prefontaine basically was pulling
link |
from strength, speed, power, muscular endurance,
link |
long duration effort, high intensity, aerobic, anaerobic,
link |
as he sort of tried to maximize every fuel system.
link |
And you'll see that in the races that he runs,
link |
but that when runners are nearing the final laps,
link |
the so-called bell lap of a race,
link |
they'll often look to one another to see where somebody is,
link |
obviously to assess their progress and how close somebody is.
link |
But when somebody gets past,
link |
oftentimes you'll see someone access this mysterious kick,
link |
this ability to tap into some additional gear
link |
that allows them to run forward or faster
link |
when they themselves actually thought
link |
that they were maxed out.
link |
So someone could be running for the finish line.
link |
They're convinced they're going to win.
link |
They're going max effort,
link |
or at least they perceive max effort.
link |
Someone passes them and all of a sudden,
link |
max effort has changed.
link |
Because of that visual target,
link |
they are able to access higher levels of speed and output
link |
and effort and performance.
link |
They don't always catch up to that person and win,
link |
but having a target, a milestone,
link |
is a powerful way that we can generate more force
link |
and energy in anything.
link |
And the visual system is the way
link |
that we bring those milestones into our brain,
link |
which then brings about epinephrine,
link |
which brings about neural firing,
link |
which allows us to access whatever resources
link |
happen to be available to us.
link |
So I find this fascinating because people often wonder,
link |
like, where does the kick come from?
link |
Where is this kind of gift of an additional gear?
link |
Where is that deeper resource?
link |
And we often express it and talk about it
link |
in kind of psychological terms like heart or willpower,
link |
or that something kind of got transplanted into us
link |
or descended into us,
link |
and not to remove any of the spiritual aspects
link |
of sport or running or effort or the human heart.
link |
But it's very clear that the nervous system,
link |
when it has a specific visual target,
link |
can generate the sorts of intense effort
link |
that it couldn't otherwise.
link |
And it sometimes even comes as a surprise
link |
to the person generating the effort.
link |
I promised that I would talk about programming,
link |
meaning when and how many times a week
link |
to do the various workouts related to endurance
link |
and how to merge those with other types of exercise
link |
that you might be doing for strength or yoga
link |
or other things that you might be doing,
link |
like work and other things unrelated to exercise.
link |
Since that's a vast space with many different parameters
link |
and you all have different lives and lifestyles
link |
and backgrounds with fitness, et cetera,
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what I'm going to do is I'm going to put
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three different levels, if you will,
link |
or protocols that one could adopt
link |
in a link on the show notes or in the caption on YouTube.
link |
If you click on that link,
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you'll be able to see three possible combinations
link |
of endurance work, strength and hypertrophy work,
link |
or endurance work, flexibility and hypertrophy work
link |
that are grounded in many of the major publications
link |
that Dr. Andy Galpin and colleagues and other people
link |
have described, including this review
link |
that's also linked there on concurrent training
link |
and how one can use concurrent training,
link |
meaning training for endurance, training for strength,
link |
training for hypertrophy,
link |
training for all these different things
link |
without having to train constantly every day,
link |
twice a day, et cetera.
link |
So if you are interested in taking the protocols
link |
that you learned about in this episode
link |
and in previous episodes and combining those,
link |
we've placed them there for you
link |
as a completely zero cost resource.
link |
Please understand they are not wholly,
link |
Costello agrees they are not wholly.
link |
There will be variation in terms of what people can tolerate
link |
and what they have time for,
link |
but I think they'll serve as a useful guideline
link |
in getting started or in continuing with
link |
and expanding on existing endurance work, strength work,
link |
hypertrophy work, and so forth.
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Just really quickly,
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we didn't talk about supplements much today.
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In the previous episodes,
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I talked about the phosphocreatine system
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and supplementing with creatine,
link |
talked about beta alanine
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for kind of moderate duration work.
link |
Really the only things that have been shown
link |
to really improve endurance work
link |
across the four varieties of endurance work
link |
I described today,
link |
they have essentially two forms.
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One are stimulants, so things like caffeine
link |
will definitely improve endurance work
link |
There's a little bit of evidence that caffeine intake
link |
can actually inhibit the function of the creatine system,
link |
but it's just one study, but that's interesting.
link |
If you want to read that study,
link |
you can put caffeine into examine.com
link |
and it will take you to that study.
link |
Many people get sore after workouts,
link |
in particular workouts that involve
link |
a lot of eccentric loading
link |
or workouts that are very novel
link |
where they've kind of pushed it
link |
instead of moving gradually, as I suggest,
link |
into say high-intensity anaerobic endurance work
link |
of three sets of 20 seconds on, 100 second rest.
link |
Maybe you get over-ambitious and you do eight sets,
link |
in which case you are extremely sore.
link |
Certain forms of magnesium,
link |
in particular magnesium malate, M-A-L-A-T-E,
link |
have been shown to be useful for removing
link |
or reducing the amount of delayed onset muscle soreness.
link |
That form of magnesium is distinctly different
link |
than the sorts of magnesium
link |
that are good for getting us into sleep,
link |
things like magnesium threonate and by glycinate.
link |
And then there's this whole thing about beet powder
link |
and beet juices and things that increase nitric oxide
link |
and allow for more vasodilation
link |
and therefore delivery of blood to muscle and neurons
link |
and other tissues for long bouts of endurance work.
link |
Some people like beet juice and the related compounds
link |
that increase arginine and vasodilation.
link |
Some people don't.
link |
Some people don't feel good when they take those.
link |
Some people also don't feel good
link |
when they take beta-alanine
link |
because it can give them this feeling
link |
of kind of like itchy, creepy crawlies under the skin,
link |
kind of the niacin phenomenon, the niacin flush.
link |
Some people don't mind that
link |
or some people don't experience that.
link |
So when it comes to supplementation,
link |
there's a lot of variety,
link |
but magnesium malate has been shown to reduce soreness.
link |
So sometimes that's good.
link |
Cold and hot contrast therapy for soreness,
link |
things of that sort.
link |
But in general, we focused mainly today on behavioral tools.
link |
You'll notice that all of the tools are accessible
link |
without the need for lots of equipment.
link |
So I didn't say you need a rower or you need a kettlebell,
link |
though those will work.
link |
And I hope I was able to illustrate for you
link |
that endurance isn't just one thing.
link |
It's not just the ability to go for long bouts of exercise
link |
of different kinds, that there's also this mental component
link |
because of the way that neurons work.
link |
And also that there are these different forms of endurance,
link |
of muscular endurance, where you're going to fail
link |
because of the muscles and muscle energy utilization
link |
and the nerves that innervate those muscles locally,
link |
not because of a failure to bring in oxygen or blood.
link |
Whereas long duration effort,
link |
it's going to be more about being below your VO2 max
link |
and your ability to be efficient for long bouts
link |
of more than 12 minutes of exercise.
link |
One set, as I say, of 12 minutes to maybe several hours.
link |
I should just mention with long duration type work,
link |
you could even imagine raking in the yard or mowing a lawn,
link |
depending on how big that lawn is.
link |
I used to have a job when I was a kid mowing lawns,
link |
and I'll tell you,
link |
we didn't have many neighbors with very big lawns,
link |
but there are a few of them felt huge
link |
because they were really convoluted.
link |
And if you're pushing that mower,
link |
and these were the old fashioned mowers,
link |
not electric mowers, it's work.
link |
That's also of the sort that we call
link |
long duration endurance work.
link |
High intensity training will tap into yet other fuel sources
link |
and mechanisms as we learned today.
link |
So if you are enjoying this podcast
link |
and you're finding the information useful,
link |
it would be great if you would subscribe
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to the YouTube channel.
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That really helps us quite a lot.
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you can click the notifications button on YouTube as well.
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That way you're sure to never miss an episode.
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We always release episodes on Monday,
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but we also sometimes release episodes in between Mondays.
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So please do subscribe to the YouTube channel.
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Please also give us feedback in the comment section
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link |
That's where you can tell us about topics
link |
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And again, those are all zero cost ways
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We do have a Patreon.
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at patreon.com slash Andrew Huberman.
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You can support the podcast at any level that you like.
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Please also check out our sponsors
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I know ad reads are not the first thing
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Please understand that the ads and the sponsors
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So if you have the means, check out the sponsors.
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We only work with sponsors whose products
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There's no obligation, however,
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and we do talk about supplements from time to time.
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Again, no obligation to use supplements.
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We also talk about behavioral tools,
link |
but if you are interested in supplements,
link |
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And we work with Thorne, T-H-O-R-N-E.
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Thorne is a supplement manufacturer
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This is a huge problem elsewhere in the supplement industry.
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Many brands don't include what they say they include
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This seems to show up every time people
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test different brands, but Thorne continually tests out
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with the highest levels of accuracy and stringency.
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If you want to see the supplements that I take,
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you can go to thorne.com slash the letter U slash Huberman.
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And if you do that, you can see all the supplements
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that I take, you can get 20% off any of those supplements
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as well if you want to navigate into the main Thorne site
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and you see a supplement that you're interested in,
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So that's thorne.com slash the letter U slash Huberman.
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So we have both cost-free and other ways
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And please check out our new website,
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which is HubermanLab.com.
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There you can find all the episodes of all the podcasts
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and some summary and important notes from the podcast.
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And last but not least, on behalf of myself and Costello,
link |
who's finally waking up for, oh no, he went back to sleep.
link |
Thank you for your interest in science.
link |
I'll see you in the next one.