Our Episode

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Welcome
to the Huberman Lab Guest
Series, where I
and an expert guest
discuss science and science
based tools for everyday life.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
I'm Andrew Huberman
and I'm a professor
of neurobiology
and ophthalmology
at Stanford School of Medicine.

Today's episode marks the
fourth in the six episode
series on fitness,
exercise, and performance.

And today's episode is all about
optimal fitness programming,
that is how to design a fitness
and exercise program that
can achieve the goals that you
want for fitness and for sports
performance.

Dr.

Andy Galpin,
great to be back.

In previous episodes,
you taught us
about the various
adaptations that
occur at the level of cells,
at the level of organs,
indeed at the level of
the entire body that
underlie things like
improvements and strength
and speed,
hypertrophy, AKA muscle
growth, and the various
forms of endurance.

And you laid out beautifully
the various protocols
that one can do in
order to achieve
each and every one
of those adaptations.

Today I would love
for you to teach us
how we can combine different
protocols to achieve
multiple adaptations
in parallel--
for instance, how to improve
endurance and strength, how
to achieve some
level of hypertrophy,
perhaps directed hypertrophy
at specific muscle groups,
while also maintaining endurance
and perhaps improving speed,
for instance.

And if you would, I'd
love for you to tell us
how we can combine
different protocols
and vary those across the
week, across the month,
across the year so that we
can make regular progress
and perhaps even could give
us a window into the ways
to make the fastest
progress possible.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah, I
would love to do that.

We've invested a lot of time
in the previous episodes
covering background and concepts
and detail about the physiology
so you understood
why you're making
the choices you're making
and why other choices are
less effective.

In this discussion,
I would actually
like to jump maybe more
directly to the answer
and kind of get right into
the protocol and maybe
a little bit less background.

If you're interested
in that stuff,
I suppose you have to go
backwards a little bit
and watch some of those
previous episodes.

But I would love to jump in to
just some samples, some case
studies, if you will,
and kind of walk
through different protocols.

I know that over the course
of my 11 years as a college
professor and being
in the public space
a little bit, probably the
most numerous style of question
I have gotten is exactly that.

So I know the rep
range for this,
or I know the style of
training for that adaptation.

But how do I put them together?

And I would just like
to spend our time
today going through
those things.

And the reason I want
to do it is this.

Some people listening at home
surely just love exercise.

They're already bought in.

And they're going to
train no matter what.

And they're interested in just
actually being more effective.

And so the way that you
structure and put your plan
together will in
large part determine
getting more progress
for less effort
or actually being able to put
the same amount of effort in
and getting results faster.

There's also some folks
probably listening who are like,
OK, I exercise.

I do what I can.

I'm bought into the
benefits that you've
talked so elaborately
over the 100 plus episodes
you've done about the
various benefits of exercise.

But you don't like--
you're kind of doing it because
you know it's important.

But you're not there.

So for those folks,
it's sort of like, OK,
how can we actually
make this thing
more effective so we can make
sure you hit the things you're
absolutely have to get for the
short and long term benefits
to make sure that you're looking
the way you want to look,
you're performing physically
the way you want to perform,
and that you can do that
across your lifespan?

So how can we give
you all some structure
to where, again, you
don't have to turn
into an absolute lover
of physical fitness
and it doesn't have
to take over your life
but you can still get more
results for your same time
restrictions, whether
that be two days a week
or five days a week
or only certain access
to equipment or experience,
whatever the case may be?

How can we help those
folks as well put together
a protocol that will get
them closer to their goals
with less restrictions?

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Fantastic.

And I'm hoping
that along the way,
you'll also point us to how
often to take the fitness
assessment for each
of the adaptations
that you referred to
in a previous episode.

We will also link to that
fitness assessment segment
in the show note
captions for this episode
because that fitness assessment
for different adaptations,
I think, is a really
powerful way for people
to touch in and see how much
long endurance do they have,
how much anaerobic
capacity do they have,
how much strength
do they really have.

And then perhaps you'd
also be willing to throw
in a couple of
additional ways that we
can assess our level
of fitness and progress
in this arc of fitness
program across the year.

ANDY GALPIN: Amazing.

I can't wait to do that.

I think it is also
important before we jump in
to acknowledge a lot of folks
may be thinking to themselves,
I don't really
necessarily need a plan.

Why do I have to do that?

I don't have a certain
goal I'm going after.

I'm not running a
race any time soon.

I'm not a competitive athlete.

I just-- I go to the
gym, and I workout.

And that's great.

Well, I would like to try to
convince you that regardless
of where you're at,
having a plan will achieve
those things we
just talked about,
which is more success
in a shorter time frame.

There's actually a
significant amount of research
to support this.

Those individuals who go
on a specific training plan
compared to those
who do not will
receive better
results independent
of the effectiveness
of the program.

So we've talked in
previous episodes
about tons of different
styles and strategies.

And to reiterate,
it really doesn't
matter which one you pick.

The fact that you
have a plan is always
more effective than
not having a plan.

And so, again,
even if you're not
planning on competing
with something,
if you want to shorten
the amount of time you're
in the gym, get more
results from it,
I would strongly encourage
to put something together.

The two largest reasons why
people don't get results
with their fitness
training protocol
is number one,
adherence, and then
number two, some sort
of progressive overload.

Both of those two
things are challenging
to accomplish without a plan.

So the reason people don't
go to the gym, one of them,
and one of the
reasons why it takes
them so long is because
they don't walk in
with a very specific plan.

It's sort of like going
to the grocery store
and figuring out what
you're going to buy
versus knowing
exactly what you're
going to get in your shopping
list, grabbing those things,
and getting out.

You'll notice your
time in the grocery
store is half the length.

You're more productive.

And you didn't waste
money on extra things.

So that alone will
drive adherence
because you're now going
to think to yourself, oh,
that 90-minute workout I do
is actually really just 60.

And so now the next time you
go to training you're like,
man, I don't have 90 minutes.

You realize it's only
60 or 40 or 30 or 20
or whatever it needs to be.

So that alone will
get you there.

The second part of
that which is overload.

It's very difficult to
understand and remember, well,
the last time I did lat raises,
I used I think 5 pounds.

And I think I did like 12.

Well, if you don't have some
sort of system of tracking--
and this can be as
simple as a notebook,
just writing down
what you did before
and doing a little bit
more the next time.

That is going to almost
guarantee you success.

So having some structure-- and
this structure can be fairly
loose, so we're going to talk
about a bunch of different
examples--
is something I strongly
encourage everyone
to utilize for their exercise.

ANDREW HUBERMAN:
Before we begin,
I'd like to emphasize
that this podcast is
separate from my teaching and
research roles at Stanford.

It is also separate from
Dr.

Andy Galpin's teaching
and research roles at
Cal State Fullerton.

It is, however, part of
our desire and effort
to bring zero cost to
consumer information
about science and
science-related tools
to the general public.

In keeping with that
theme, we'd like
to thank the sponsors
of today's podcast.

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So what sorts of
things should people
be thinking about when
developing an overall fitness
program?

ANDY GALPIN: A few
minutes ago, we
were talking about how two of
the major reasons people don't
get as much out of
their training programs
as they would like is because
of one, a lack of adherence,
and two, a lack of
progressive overload.

So the solution to
that is constructing
a plan that lives within
your realistic limitations.

So I would like to walk you
through my 10-step approach
to how I design
training programs.

Now, before I do that, I
think it is fair and important
for the audience to
understand that this is simply
my approach.

I've been doing
this a long time.

I played college football.

And I wrote my own training
programs back then.

I have and am still working
with professional athletes
in the PGA TOUR and the NFL,
the NBA, Major League Baseball,
as well as a ton of
general population folks.

So this is a combination
of the evidence base
that we've been
talking about in terms
of best practices for
strength and conditioning
as well as just my
years of experience.

So there are many, many
ways one could do this.

I'm not even suggesting
this is the best.

This is simply how I do it.

This is exactly how
I handle it when
a new individual comes to me
and how I teach my students.

So step number one is assessing
properly and identifying
a training goal.

Now, that's actually
sort of funny
because we hear that a lot.

But a lot of people actually
never take that step,
not to call anybody
in the room out.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: But
what's happening here
is this morning
Andy, Dr.

Galpin,
and I were training together.

And he was providing amazing
tips on form and set rep
cadence and the sort of thing.

And he said, so what's your
training goal for the next 12
months?

And I paused.

And it turned into a
very long pause because--
ANDY GALPIN: Which
is an nice way
of saying he didn't
have an answer.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I
didn't have an answer.

Of course, I don't
just want to maintain
what I've developed in terms
of strength and hypertrophy
and endurance.

But I don't have a clear goal.

So I'm hoping that by the
end of today's discussion,
I will be on track to
a clear set of goals.

ANDY GALPIN: Amazing.

I'm not going to
bore you all here.

But, really, I
can't stress enough
how important that step really
truly is to getting results.

The analogy we use here
is if you left your house
and you were attempting to
get to the grocery store
and you just started
driving and if you drove
every possible route,
you would eventually
get to a grocery store.

And so, yes, that can work.

A better approach is
saying, here's where I am.

There's where I want to go.

What is the optimal route there?

And that's really what
you're doing with goal.

So it is a boring setup.

It is not interesting to hear.

I don't have any real
hacks or tricks for you.

But it is step number
one on purpose.

We have to know exactly
where we're going.

You can do this in two ways.

Way number one is to
just pick something.

Arbitrarily decide
I'm going to run a 5K.

Or I've done that
before, and I want
to improve it by 10 seconds.

I want to lose 10 pounds.

You can just pick one.

That's great.

Another way is to run through
that fitness testing protocol
we described a few
episodes before.

And if you do that, you can see
which of these areas that maybe
you have the largest lagging in.

Or what is the most
severe performance anchor
is how we refer to it.

And then choose that
as your primary goal.

So either option.

Some people come in
to training programs
with a very clear goal in mind.

They want to add more muscle
or whatever, whatever.

OK, great.

If you're like, I
don't really know,
I just kind of work out,
then run the fitness testing
protocol.

You'll see what score
is the lowest end.

And then you'll maybe make
that a priority for the next,
say, three months.

ANDREW HUBERMAN:
So the first step
is to identify a specific or
set of specific training goals.

ANDY GALPIN: A really
nice tool for helping
you set a goal is a
system called SMART.

Right now there's a
little bit of debate
on what those acronyms
actually stand for.

But we'll get close enough.

So SMART is often Specific,
Measurable, Attainable,
Realistic, and Timely.

So starting off with
S, specific, in general
the more specific your goal
is, the higher likelihood
you will have at
succeeding in that.

M, being measurable,
means it needs
to be something that you can
actually put a metric on.

So this can be
objective or subjective.

But, generally, I like to have
at least one objective measure.

So remembering
objective is something
that is not based on feeling.

It is not up to you.

This could be something
simple like your body weight.

It could be how
much you can bench
press, what's your 1
mile time, whatever
is most important to you.

It actually doesn't have to
be a fitness related goal.

For example, if
you're using fitness
as a way to enhance your
sleep, the main metric
you may be interested in
is amount of hours slept.

It could be something
like efficiency
or whatever is most interesting.

It could be work productivity.

It doesn't really matter.

So it doesn't have to
actually be the fitness goal.

But what is the motivation
of why you're doing it?

So that's specific, measurable.

Attainable or actionable,
as is often described,
is something that is
within your capability.

So attainable-- a bad
example of attainable
is something like, my
goal is to win more games.

That may not be up to you.

The other team
you're playing, it
could influence it, the
schedule, et cetera.

So attainable
should be something
that is within your control.

Realistic or relevant
to you is something
that is, again, something
realistic that you can achieve.

You wouldn't want
to make a goal that
is you want to double
your body mass.

That is not going to happen.

So think about the constraints.

How old are you?

What's your training experience?

How much time do you really
have to invest in this?

And then pick something
that is realistic.

And then, honestly,
my little twist
here is take that in minus 10%.

Because, typically, when people
put together training programs,
their goal tends
to be quite lofty.

And they get some small
percentage of the way
and realize they're never going
to get there and then back off.

We actually-- this
sort of reminds me
of a classic deception
study that we
did in my lab one time,
where we took people
and we had them do this
maximal front raise.

Basically, you held a dumbbell
out in front of you for as long
as you possibly could.

And the goal here was actually--
it's a deception study.

So we're tricking them.

And so we said, OK,
we want to just get
normative values to
see how long people
can hold this front raise.

And I think we use something
like 5% of their body weight.

And so they came in.

And they did it one time.

And we timed them.

They didn't get
to see the clock.

They left.

And then we said, we've got
to come back in and repeat it.

We got to do a
couple of tries here
to get a normal value in
case it's off, whatever.

Well, the participants were
split up into four groups.

So group one actually was told
that their time was 15% lower
than they actually got.

Group two was 5% lower.

Group three was 5% higher.

And group four was 15% higher.

So the second time
they came in to do it,
our graduate student, quote
unquote, "made a mistake"
and left the timer
in front of them.

So the first time again
they did the exercise,
they're just holding it.

They don't have any idea
how long they're holding it.

The second time,
they had a giant iPad
set like just a little
bit off centered
where they can clearly see it.

So they watched the time go by.

And, of course, what happened
was those folks, say,
who did 1 minute the very
first time when they tested,
they came back in to
do the second time.

And they're holding it.

And we told them
they actually got
45 seconds, when in reality
they had done a minute.

So they're holding
it and holding it.

And they think they
only did 45 seconds.

By the time they get to
like second 40, 41, 42,
they get past 45.

They almost all quit,
like 47, 48 seconds,
because they wanted to
beat their previous score
but then were like,
cool, I beat it.

And then they quit early.

So they were actually
not yet to failure.

But they were just
happy enough to beat
what they thought they'd done.

And then they quit.

The other group on
the inverse side--
again, say they got a minute.

We told them they got a
minute and 15 seconds.

They got to like 45
seconds, 50 seconds
and started realizing, oh, man,
I have 30 more seconds to go.

And they quit way early because
the carrot was way too far out.

They realized I'm never
going to get there.

So I'm just going to stop now.

Can you guess which group did
the best on the post-test?

ANDREW HUBERMAN: The ones that
were just within about 5% of.

ANDY GALPIN: Totally.

So they wanted to improve.

And so, again, say, they
got a minute the first time.

We told them they
got a minute 5--
or, sorry, they got a
minute 5 the first time.

We told them they
only got a minute.

They actually
exceeded that greatly
because they wanted the PR.

So making sure that goal
is properly aligned,
it needs to be a
little bit scary,
a little bit unrealistic.

You're going to have
to work for this.

If it's too easy, you'll quit.

You won't feel like a challenge.

If it's too hard, though,
you'll quit early as well.

So you want to make sure it's
that reasonable balance of, ah,
should I train today?

Or like maybe I'll
just go through--
if I do that, I'm
not going to hit.

I got to get after it.

But not like, oh my God, like,
there's just no chance here.

So you're going to
walk away early.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: That's a
fantastic study, I have to say.

It's very simple.

I think it illustrates a number
of important psychological
principles about goal setting,
motivation, self perception,
but also the dopamine system.

The dopamine system is this
universal reward system
that-- meaning it
doesn't only work
for food or only work
for fitness goals
or only work for academic
goals or relationship goals.

It is the universal
substrate for all of that.

And I actually think there are
some real gems of information
in that study design
that you describe.

So just cue that for maybe
a potential collaboration
between our
laboratories because--
ANDY GALPIN: Yeah, absolutely.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: --I
think it's very important.

But it does cue up another
question relevant to fitness.

In particular, which is
what are your thoughts
on intermediate goals?

So let's say my goal is
to drop 2% of body fat
from where I am now
a year from now.

So roll into the next year from
now about 2% lower on body fat
but maintain my lean body mass
or maybe even increase it.

How should I assess progress?

Because the dopamine
system loves a goal.

It loves anticipation of a goal.

But it responds best to, we
sort of re-up, if you will,
our dopamine any
time we get a signal
that we are on the right
track to that goal.

And that signal could be,
OK, I did the workout.

I just trust that these
workouts are going
to give me the result I want.

But, of course,
we know that when
people get a glimmer of the
idea or some objective feedback
that they're on the right path,
that dopamine system really
fires and provides
motivation for continuing
toward the ultimate goal.

And as we've talked about
in the strength, speed,
and hypertrophy episode,
resistance training
itself has this built into
it because of the infusion
of blood into the muscles.

You actually get a
little window into what
you might get in
terms of an adaptation
simply by way of
the so-called pump,
whereas endurance type work
generally doesn't have that.

You don't see yourself
get better drop back
and then adapting to
actually get better.

But that's actually what you
see with weight training.

So given all of that contour
of the dopamine system, what
sorts of intermediate goals
should I set for myself
or should somebody
set for themselves?

And I realize it will probably
depend on the ultimate goal.

But would you say check in
on progress once every week,
every month, three months?

ANDY GALPIN: I don't know if you
can tell the look on my face.

I love this question
and this topic.

I spend so much time on my
senior and graduate level
program design course.

I've been fortunate to
work with a few athletes
where we've had multiple years.

And if you can really take
the time to step back and go--
it's not about optimizing
for the next six weeks.

And in this case, it's
not the next fight.

It is the championship
fight that we
need to get to in three years.

Or it is the Olympics,
which are on a quad program.

You're really optimizing
for that for a year.

If you can have that foresight
and really think about that
and then work backwards, you
can see some pretty tremendous
things.

The sort of saying
that is we tend
to overestimate
what we can get done
in a week and underestimate
what can happen in a year.

That can be
extraordinarily powerful.

However, you have to have
those metrics called out ahead
of time because you will lose
motivation in that short term
because you won't see
that result immediately.

But if you remember, I'm
on a path to 4% or 2%
or whatever you need to
be, therefore, I only
need to be this far right now.

I need to be that far
and then that far.

It's actually quite clear.

And so what we would
actually do in that scenario,
not to go so off track
here because I can really
go on this stuff, is--
let's say it was the
year recommendation.

You're going to actually need
to go to the last part of SMART,
which is timely.

So part of setting
this goal is making
sure you understand the
time domain responsible.

And it's actually
quite great here
because, not to go
Inception on us,
where we're like
list within a list,
and Rob kills us over here.

But number one of this
program design thing
was assessing your goal.

Number two is identifying
your defender.

What I mean by that is,
what is stopping you
from hitting that goal?

So you want to lose 2%
body fat in the next year.

OK, great.

What's going to stop us?

Once we can achieve
that, and we'll
go into more of
that in a second,
then you just start
walking that 2% backwards.

So you might have to
go something like this.

Look, every time I start
working out really hard,
I always get hurt.

Interesting.

OK, great.

So maybe instead
of jumping really
hard into a high intensity
interval training program,
knowing we're likely to hurt
something or get burnt out
or quit or whatever the
defender is for you, maybe
we invest something right
now, which is maybe improving
your flexibility or working on
movement technique, whatever
is going to stop you
from getting hurt.

Or maybe we progress slower
so we don't get there.

That will allow us to do
the work necessary to hit
that goal 12 months from
now, not two weeks from now,
not two months from now.

Maybe that's not the case.

Maybe you're like, no,
look, hey, I move well.

I feel like I'm in decent shape.

I've got enough
muscle mass on me.

We've talked in
previous episodes
why having insufficient
muscle mass
is sometimes detrimental
for fat loss.

So you checked all that boxes.

I don't get hurt very often.

I got equipment
around, no problem.

I've got the time
in my schedule.

And I have enough muscle.

Great.

Well, now we maybe just
split it up and say,
look, we got 12 months.

We got 2%.

It's as simple as doing
half a percent per quarter
of the year.

And now all we're looking
at is that number.

I don't have to necessarily
get all these things done.

I can go a quarter, half
percent, half percent,
half percent, half percent.

You're going to get there.

The other scenario that
I laid out a second ago,
it maybe needs to look
like something like this.

Quarter one is going to be 0%.

Well, yeah, that's
right, you may not
lose a pound for the
next three months.

We don't care.

That's not the goal
of these treatments.

I know that's the
goal this year.

That's our major
macro cycle goal.

We're going to get there.

But to get there
most effectively,
we need to invest in working
more with your chiropractor
or whatever the thing is.

That will allow us to
then go half a percent
quarter two, when we can
really start training.

But we're going to ramp into it.

Quarter three we're going to
go another half a percent.

And now we're halfway there.

Quarter four, we've invested
so much you're ready to go.

We're going to go hard.

We're going to get that
last 1%, that last quarter.

And we're going to get there.

And you won't be hurt.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: So that
makes it very clear.

And I can also envision
how the precise structure
of these intermediate
goals would
vary depending on what sort
of adaptation one is pursuing.

And I do remember from
our previous episodes
that fat loss itself
is not an adaptation.

It is a byproduct of
other adaptations.

So I just want to make
sure that you know
that I was paying attention.

It's committed to memory.

ANDY GALPIN: Absolutely.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Some
goals, such as fat loss,
are very quantifiable.

And yet, they might
not be linear.

It's hard to know--
the assumption is if you
ingest x fewer calories than
are required per day, then
you'll lose x amount of weight,
some percentage from body fat.

I think that cues
up the idea that we
need to build some
flexibility into our thinking
about these intermediate goals
in order to just make sure
that dopamine system isn't
tethered to exact numbers
because after all a
reduction in 2% body fat,
for instance, is really
a desire to achieve
a different sort of overall body
composition or recomposition.

I don't know, by the way,
that that's my exact goal.

I think one of my goals is to
be able to run a mile faster.

And I'm sort of haunted
by this experience
of wanting to run
cross-country in college
and trying to walk on.

We weren't a Division I school.

But the threshold for being
considered for the team
was you had to run a sub
10-minute 2 mile, which turns
out to be very, very fast.

ANDY GALPIN: That's really hard.

ANDREW HUBERMAN:
I did not do that.

I didn't even come close.

And I don't think that I
could reasonably do that now.

I'm not interested in committing
to the kind of training
required.

The sacrifice isn't
meaningful enough for me.

ANDY GALPIN: Fair and honest.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: But
lowering one's time
to run a mile by,
I don't know, 10%
seems like a reasonable
goal across six months.

ANDY GALPIN: Sure.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Great.

So in the case of a
goal like that, clearly
there are specific
training programs.

But this raises
the issue of, what
if I have other goals as well?

And at what point
do people having
multiple goals start to set
up collisions between goals?

How do we know whether or
not something is reasonable
not just on its own but because
of the other things that one
has structured
into their program.

So being able to reduce a mile
time by 10% in six months,
OK, maybe that's doable.

Maybe it's not.

You can tell me.

But also being able to
double the amount that they
can do for single repetition
leg extension for that matter,
at the same time those seem
like incompatible goals.

ANDY GALPIN: So a
couple of things.

Number one, the more
specific and precise
you can be with a
single goal, the faster
you will get there, generally.

So in theory, if you had one
thing you wanted to achieve,
the best way to go about
it is to focus on that.

Give it the most priority.

That doesn't mean you can't do
anything else along the way.

You can.

But you would want
to focus on that.

The more additional
goals you bring in,
the more distraction you're
creating for that primary goal.

Depending on what
those goals are,
you can actually do
them at the same time.

Some other combinations
are less effective.

Think about it like this.

We went through those
nine adaptations.

And we went through them in
a specific order on purpose.

The closer those adaptations
are together in that list,
the more compatible they
are to training each other.

The further away, they
become more challenging.

So just to give a few examples.

If you wanted to improve
your speed in power,
you could basically train
those simultaneously.

They would not interfere
with each other at all.

And, in fact, since power
is speed times force,
it would be complementary.

If you just walk down
the line from there
to strength, hey, same thing.

If you get faster, that's
going to aid in strength
because force is mass
times acceleration.

So if you improve
acceleration, you're
contributing to strength.

Same thing with power.

So speed, power, and
strength are generally
very complementary.

You can absolutely train
all three of those goals
at the same time
and have no issues.

Getting into
hypertrophy, now we've
got a little bit of distinction.

If you're going to train
strength and hypertrophy, as we
talked about in that
episode, at the base
those are going to
be complementary.

You add on some muscle.

You're going to get stronger.

You start training for strength.

It's probably going to help
you out on some muscle mass.

As you get to the
end of that spectrum,
the overlap between
the two starts
to go away, such
that if you truly
wanted to maximize strength
above everything else,
if you continue to train
for hypertrophy as well,
that's going to take
too many resources out
of your recovery bin.

And you won't be
able to do that.

The inverse would
also be the same.

If you're training
to maximize strength,
you wouldn't be able
to put enough volume on
to get sufficient hypertrophy.

So if you wanted to then
combine speed with hypertrophy,
you're going farther
away from each other,
which means it's going to be
more and more distraction.

So the hypertrophy training
would cause a ton of fatigue.

You wouldn't be able to go
at max speed for your speed
or power strength.

So you're going to be
compromising those results.

Now, speed training
won't compromise
your hypertrophy training
because it's non fatiguing.

And so, boom, here
we have a little bit
of an interference effect one
way but probably not the other.

Let's move down the
spectrum one more time
and get into endurance.

We won't go through
all of these things.

But you're getting
the idea here.

Oh, a little bit of high
intensity intervals?

OK, cool.

Now, would that compromise
my speed, power, or strength?

Probably because there's a
little bit of residual fatigue.

If the volume was low
enough, then you'd be fine.

All you're worried about
there is not necessarily
like some sort of
cellular mechanism.

It's just simple fatigue.

It is amount of
energy expenditure
versus is that compromising
my recovery to come back.

Would those first three
or four of those-- speed,
power, strength--
interfere with your ability
to elevate your
anaerobic capacity?

Probably not.

Almost surely, in
fact, if you look
at any of the literature
on endurance training,
you will see that speed, power,
and strength almost always
improve endurance.

Endurance training added on top
of strength can be detrimental,
can have a neutral
effect, but generally
doesn't help one get stronger by
adding additional conditioning
unless you're so unfit you can't
get through the volume needed
in the strength training.

One more example here so we
don't drag this out too far.

In the case of something like
I want to lose fat, well, hey,
we don't have to worry
about interference.

It doesn't really matter.

If you're fatigued for
your hypertrophy session,
not a big deal.

We're just trying to
get some work done.

If your hypertrophy
session fatigued you
from your
conditioning, it's cool
because you got the work done.

So you don't have to
worry about it so much.

So it really kind of
depends on the actual goal.

And what you want
to pay attention to
is, actually, what are the
chances of overlap, which
means like what are
the adaptations you
get physiologically that cross
over from one to the other?

And then what are the
ones that are actually
going to start interfering?

In fact, in my class, I
have this giant matrix chart
of interference effect
going from adaptations
through a whole bunch
of systems, everything
from handling pH to
lymphatic drainage
to bone marrow
density, et cetera.

You can walk through
these whole things
and see which ones actually have
a positive effect, which ones
have a massive positive
effect, and then
which ones actually have a
little bit of an interference.

And perhaps if you
guys are nice enough,
we could throw that into
a newsletter or something,
some PDF or something.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I think that
would be immensely valuable.

I think some of that more
extensive information,
when it's laid out in grid form
like that is really useful.

So we should-- well,
now we've said it.

So we--
ANDY GALPIN: I didn't
say I would do it.

I said perhaps.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I
think it's a great idea.

I think it's a terrific idea.

The idea that items
closer to each other
on the list of those nine
different adaptations
are going to be easier to
achieve in parallel than items
further apart makes
perfect sense.

And what I heard was that
there's a few caveats that
might seem minor.

But they're actually
quite important,
such as anything that is
relatively low intensity
and doesn't impede
recovery can probably
be included as a parallel goal.

So some speed work
in conjunction
with some long duration cardio
work, versus even though we're
talking about number 2 on that
list and number 9 on that list.

ANDY GALPIN: In that
case, the long duration
endurance, even if
it's low intensity,
may actually interfere
with the speed
if the volume gets too high.

If you're talking about,
I went on a 30 minute jog,
for most people,
it's totally fine.

What we're really
talking about here
is when the miles
start piling up.

And the time really starts
getting there in combination
with some of the
things-- the factors
we've talked about earlier,
which is exercise choice.

So more eccentric landing
based exercise choices.

Running, for example, is
more likely to interfere
than cycling because
you're not landing.

Swimming is low impact.

So if you're going
to do those things,
you can hedge your bets a little
bit by choosing an exercise
choice that is less impactful.

Again, if we're literally--
because there's oftentimes
confusing here is like,
oh, don't do 10 minutes
on the treadmill
before you lift.

You're going to cut--
oh, time out.

Warm up is fine.

We're really talking about
probably more than 30
plus minutes at higher
than 60% heart rate--
random number,
something like that,
depends on the
person, et cetera.

But it has to be a decent chunk.

Again, you can actually fix
that by then just consuming
calories.

You can also fix that by
making sure everything
else in the hidden and visible
stressor bucket is improved.

So that's just like
one of our tricks
that we'll get into when
we get to the recovery,
is you don't necessarily need
to reduce your training if you
just ramp up your recovery.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I'd like
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I'm going to take the liberty of
assuming that most people fall
into one of either three
bins in terms of their goals,
again, most people.

Certainly, there are
going to be people
that lie outside these bins.

I think if you polled 100 people
or 100,000 or 1 million people
as to what their major
goals were in working out,
they'd say, as you so
nicely listed out before,
aesthetic changes,
functionality, and longevity.

But that one in three
really kind of sit higher
than most people would
like to perhaps even admit.

They want to look good,
which usually means
they want to lose some fat, gain
some muscle in specific places.

I realize there
are folks out there
who want to gain a lot of muscle
and just muscle everywhere.

But I think most
people would like
to have a little more
shape here, a little more
muscle there to either
balance out their aesthetic
or to accentuate certain
parts of their physique.

And they would probably
like to shave off
some subcutaneous fat, although
there are those exceptionally
lean people out there.

And they exist too.

I think it would be gain
muscle in specific places,
lose fat, and do
it in a way that
also provides some boost
to their health span
and longevity.

I would say that that might
even be 50% of people out there.

Again, I'm taking the
liberty of guesstimating.

Another bin I would venture is
interested in getting stronger
and putting on more muscle.

Certainly, there are a
number of people that
are interested in doing that.

And that could
even be more muscle
all over or more muscle
with some accentuation
to certain areas
where they happen
to be weaker or less
developed, as it were.

And then the third bin
would be people that really
enjoy cardiovascular work.

Oh, I should say the
second bin probably care
about their longevity also.

But it's not really foremost,
like, yeah, I feel great now,
and I'll live to be whatever.

But I only want to do it
if I get that much muscle.

We know these kinds of folks.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah, I run a
poll in my class every year
when I ask, what,
you guys all lift?

And, of course, I make
them put their hand up,
like, you guys are
in my class, you're
going to put your hand
up, let you lift weights.

And then I ask,
why do you train?

And long term health
is like on the list.

And they all--
I'm like any of you that
selected health are liars.

You're 20 to 25.

You are not
exercising for health.

You are exercising because
you want to look a certain way
or get stronger.

Once you get past that
undergraduate age,
though, the actual desire to
live longer and better actually
becomes pretty real.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah,
I think that there are
people who want to feel better.

They know that exercise and
the results from exercise
can make them feel better.

But, yeah, that second bin
tends to be more focused
on the aesthetic changes,
it seems, or being strong.

And then the third category,
I think, are people--
I know a lot of
folks like this, who
really enjoy what are normally
considered endurance type
activities.

And here I just want
to highlight again
what you so
beautifully illustrated
in previous episodes, that you
can gain a lot of endurance
even using weights or machines.

It just depends on
how you use them.

It's not about the exercise.

It's about how you perform
them and et cetera.

And you, again, beautifully
provided all those details
as how to create endurance
regardless of equipment
standards, et cetera.

But that third
category seem to be
people who enjoy running,
cycling, swimming, hiking,
dancing, activities
that they can
do for long periods of time.

That often will
involve some sort
of skill that is based on
improving motor patterns,
maybe not so much
stride but certainly
for people that really
love tennis, people
that love a sport, like golf.

They want to be able
to not just walk.

They want to walk the 18 holes.

They want to have a great
golf swing, et cetera.

I'm not a golf player.

So forgive me if my
nomenclature is off.

So there are three--
ANDY GALPIN: Golfer.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah, golfers.

ANDY GALPIN: You
don't play golf.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Oh, got it.

You don't play golf.

ANDY GALPIN: Well,
you play golf.

You wouldn't call a golf player.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I played
miniature golf a few times.

And that's about it,
although Stanford
does have a beautiful
golf course, I'm told.

I should learn how to play golf.

ANDY GALPIN: I'll come up and
play it for you if you want.

You come up.

I'll play it.

I'll tell you how it goes.

Get me on that course.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I can
almost see it from my lap.

So category one, I think, is a
significant fraction of people.

So as we lay out these
different ways to assess goals
and as we approach the
structure of a program,
as you'll tell us-- if we could
perhaps touch back to those
every once in a while.

Again, I'm taking the
liberty of assuming
that we will net about 80% to
90% of people out there, again,
those categories being people
who want to lose some fat,
maybe build some muscle in
specific areas on their body,
and really want to be healthy.

They want to feel great.

And they want to have a long
health span and lifespan.

They want to live a
long time feeling great.

Second category, people want to
build more muscle and strength.

Sure, they don't want
to damage their health.

But that's not their main focus.

Their main focus is on
building muscle and strength.

And then that third
category of people
who really want to do more
endurance type work, feel
great and strong
doing it but not
because they can carry heavy
weights while they're doing it.

But rather, they can
feel vital and they
can push harder for longer
and maybe even translate that
to some of the more recreational
type activities or sports,
like tennis, and things
that are more long duration,
playing soccer or
maybe even softball
or things of that sort.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah,
surfing, swimming.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: So those
three categories-- maybe we
could call those bin A, B, and C
for sake of today's discussion.

I think if you're
willing to embrace--
ANDY GALPIN: Yeah, I love it.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: --I think
that will be informative toward
our listeners in a way that--
simply not assuming what
people's different goals are
might not be able to accomplish.

Said differently,
hopefully, by doing that,
people will derive a lot
more from the description
of the program that
you're going to give us.

ANDY GALPIN: Love it.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Now,
I am certain that I
want to let you return to
your list of the five things
that people need to consider
when establishing a exercise
program.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah,
great, let's do that.

I also do want to acknowledge
a point you've brought up.

Exercise doesn't mean
just lifting weights.

That's my background.

That's what I spend my time on.

So I sort of default to
examples in that category.

But it doesn't have to be that.

You've articulated
plenty of other ways
where you can get amazing forms
of exercise that have nothing
to do with lifting weights.

So for those folks in--
was it bin C or 3?

I can't remember it.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Bin C.

We go A is, again, muscle,
lose fat, be healthy
now and forever.

Bin B is get
stronger, gain muscle,
don't damage your health, but
not really focus on health
in the immediate term.

And then bin C is want to play
or do endurance type activities
and, quote unquote,
"feel strong doing it,"
so have more vigor to be
able to do that longer
and maybe with more attention
to skill, et cetera,
and, of course, also want
to improve their health.

ANDY GALPIN: Well, what
you've effectively done
is you've given us three
different avatars with three
different goals.

So the next step for
each person or group
is going to be to
identify their defenders.

But before we get
that, we've got
to close the loop
on this SMART thing.

So in each case,
they have either
chosen that goal based on
their personal preference.

Or perhaps they did our
fitness testing protocol
and realized they
need to gain strength.

So whether the reason they
chose to be in buckets B or A
or C was because of our protocol
or just personal preference.

It really doesn't matter.

They still want to go through
this process of laying out
their goals and making sure,
again, they are specific.

So let's go through bin
C, which is a great one.

So you want to have more energy.

And you want to
feel stronger when
you're doing your kiteboarding.

You want to feel
stronger when you
finish your round of tennis,
round of golf, game of tennis.

OK, great.

That's a different strength.

Absolutely see, I hear, I know
what you're saying though.

Amazing.

So that goal needs to
be specific to that.

So it would be hard to make
a goal like, I want to feel
better at the end of my round.

Boy, that depends on
too many other factors.

A better goal would be
something like this.

I want to be able to run
this 2-mile loop that I
do around my neighborhood.

And I want to do it and have
a lower heart rate at the end.

Or I want to be able
to get my heart rate
recovery back faster.

Amazing, that will probably
align with you feeling,
quote unquote,
"stronger" with it.

So I did the same course.

And either I could do
it at the same speed
and it's not nearly as hard or
I can go faster, whichever one.

It doesn't matter.

But that would be an
example of a specific goal.

The other buckets you
laid out kind of already
have specific goals, like
I want to get stronger.

Well, that's going
to be the goal.

The other one is going to
be, I want to lose some fat.

The goal is sort of
implicit in that.

It's the other people
where you're just like,
I don't really care about that.

I just want to be able
to surf the great waves
and then not feel
exhausted afterwards.

All right, cool.

Well, then you still
should pick a metric
that is not that activity
maybe because it won't
be within your
control, depending
on the waves and the
temperature and all that stuff,
that you can use as a proxy to
say, if I were to do something
that represented me feeling
probably better when I surf,
what would that be?

And it's not perfect.

But it would be still as
specific as you could get.

You still want to make
sure it's measurable.

Again, this example
might be something
like you're going to
go to the pool and time
how long it takes you to
swim 800 meters or something.

It's attainable.

And then you'll set a goal
that's realistic and timely.

I'm going to improve by
5% in the next two months.

OK, cool, that probably
falls in the realm.

And then you're
making the assumption
that if you did
that, you'll probably
feel better when you go out to
do your primary activity, which
is, say, surf.

The reality of it
is every time we
work with an actual
athlete, that's what we do.

Athletes don't come
to us to lift weights.

They don't come to
us to get stronger.

They come to us because
they want to play better.

And they want to stay
on the field more.

What we're trying
to convince them of
is if you do this
thing in the gym, then
that should translate into you
being better at your sport,
recovering faster,
being less injured.

But it's still just a proxy.

And so that's all you're doing
with these other non-specific
goals, especially when they're
performance based goals.

And we didn't
package it that way.

But that's really what you
talked about for bin C there.

It is a performance based goal.

I want to be able to perform
when I'm in the field.

In my brain, that's a sport.

In your brain, it's when
you're at yoga class.

It's the same thing.

We've said this earlier in our
series that if you have a body,
you're an athlete.

I want to prepare your
body so that it can do
exactly what you want it to do.

You then get to have the choice
of what you ask it to do.

You call it a sport.

You call it your Saturday
hike with your family.

I don't really care.

It's the same thing.

You get control of
your body performing
the way you want it to perform.

And that's what this
whole thing is about.

Great.

So now that we've
covered, I think,
as much as we need to regarding
assessing and choosing a goal,
I want to get back to this idea
of identifying your defender.

So you really need
to think carefully
about what is stopping you
from hitting those goals.

And so you're
forecasting a little bit.

You're also going back into
your own personal history.

Do you have history
of knee pain?

Do you have a history
of working too much?

Do you have a history
of a lot of travel?

Do you have a history
of getting sick a lot?

What are these things
that are happening
that are going to stop you
from hitting your goal?

A couple of examples
I've already
laid out so we don't need
to go too much longer here.

But in the case of somebody
who is in maybe bin A, which
is I want to lose
some fat, maybe
gain a little bit of
muscle, OK, what's
stopping you from the strength
and conditioning side?

Is it the fact that you can't
train consistent enough?

Is it the fact that
when you go to train,
you don't know what to do?

Is it the fact that
when you go to train,
you train your ass off and
you're not getting results.

OK, great.

All three of these
different scenarios
are going to result
in different programs
because they have different
reasons you're failing.

And that is really critical.

Instead of just going I
want a fat loss program
and picking one up
off the internet,
it may not actually
be addressing
the point of failure for you.

So the sooner you can
choose your programs
based on why you're
failing, the sooner
you'll start getting results.

You have to run a little bit
of a critical analysis there.

And it can be
something scientific.

And it could be a measurement.

And it also could
just be thinking
about you've tried this in the
past and why didn't it work.

It wasn't that interesting.

OK, tell me more about
why it wasn't interesting.

I'm not really into machines.

And that's all I had.

OK, great.

Or I loved it.

I loved the gym I was at.

And I was getting results.

But it was so far away.

OK, interesting.

Why did you stop before?

Why didn't it work?

Or if it did work in
the past, amazing.

Let's go back to
something similar.

But has your life
changed at all?

Is there anything different
about now than when
it worked three years ago?

Yes, no.

If not, maybe we
run it right back.

If it is, OK, we're going
to predict those things.

And you want to work--
effectively, what I'm saying is
throughout this entire 10-step
process is going to be
you want to make sure
that there are the
non-negotiables that
are in your life that you
know are going to be ahead
of your fitness program.

And you want to work with
those things, not against them
because life will win.

When it comes to your children,
when it comes to your job,
life is going to win.

You're going to have
to give up something.

It's going to take
some hard work.

But we want to fight the
right battles for most people.

Even for our
professional athletes,
we get this all the time.

It's just like they have
nothing else to do but train.

Like, whoa, whoa, hold on
now, they're getting traded.

They have agents to deal with.

They may not have a contract.

They have families,
blah, blah, blah.

Life will get in
the way, I promise.

And so you want to fight the
battles that you can win,
not ones that you're
going to lose.

And so that's really
what this game is about.

So if the battle is, hey, my
job is super hectic, OK, great.

We're going to come up with
a different strategy that's
more flexible maybe.

I'm still going to
hold you to the fire.

I'm not going to
be easier on you.

But we're just not going to try
to set up a situation where you
have to do this workout Monday,
Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday
because you know your
job is on the road.

And you're to provide all
income for your family, whatever
the thing is.

That's what we really
want to identify.

So when I say identify
your defenders,
you need to run a little bit
of a critical analysis on this.

And a little bit of a
tool I'll use for this
is a modification
of another system
I stole from Kenny
Cain, which is what
we call the quadrant system.

So you can imagine
everything in your life
goes into one of four buckets.

Now, bucket 1 I'm just
going to call business.

And this is anything to
do with your job, income,
sort of all those things.

Bucket 2 is relationships.

So, again, this could be
family or love life, anything
that we would call
relationships--
social connection,
purpose, anything, right?

Bucket 3 is your fitness.

And bucket 4 is your recovery.

So one of the first steps we
take is we walk through this.

And we say, all right,
you have 10 points total.

And you get to distribute
these 10 points across the four
areas.

So not 10 each,
you get 10 total.

And so we walk through.

And we say, right now, where
are you giving your points?

And we could do this right
now for you if you'd like.

Or I could make up a scenario.

You want to do it?

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Sure.

ANDY GALPIN: Great.

So, Andrew, right now
in the last month,
if you had 10 points total
in those four categories,
where would you be
distributing the most points?

Which category?

And how many points
would that be?

ANDREW HUBERMAN:
Business, my work.

ANDY GALPIN: Business, work
job, sort of all those things.

And how many out of 10?

ANDREW HUBERMAN:
Which doesn't, I
should say, ever
quite feel like work.

Running a laboratory
and doing the podcast
doesn't ever really feel like
work in the traditional sense.

But it's career.

It's work.

It involves relationships.

But it certainly doesn't
enhance my fitness
except of my vocal
chords and recovery.

So with those notes
there, I would say 4 to 5.

ANDY GALPIN: You pick.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: 5.

ANDY GALPIN: 5, fair.

That's the most common
number, business 5.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Great.

Once again, I'm typical,
which makes me happy.

ANDY GALPIN: You nailed it.

ANDREW HUBERMAN:
One of the few ways
in which I've been
accused of being normal.

I pick 5 for business.

ANDY GALPIN: No kidding.

What's the next highest?

And what's that score?

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I do
invest in relationships.

I would say does it
have to be around--
can it be--
ANDY GALPIN: It has
to be a whole integer.

ANDREW HUBERMAN:
A whole integer.
2.

ANDY GALPIN: 2, all right,
we're 7 out of 10 here.

So would you say
it is fair that you
spend roughly 2 and 1/2 percent
of your-- it's not necessarily
time.

It's energy, time, focus, and
sort of all of these things--
2 and 1/2 times as much
on your business as you
do in your relationships?

ANDREW HUBERMAN: It varies,
depending on what's going on.

It feels a little skewed in
the direction of business.

So I might want to adjust
to a 4 to 3 ratio there.

ANDY GALPIN: Maybe not.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: But I think
I'm going to hold to 5, 2,
business, relationships.

And then, just for
sake of example
and because this doesn't seem
like an exceedingly precise
measure, it can have some slop.

ANDY GALPIN: Of course.

Where would you put
fitness and recovery?

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I definitely
put energy into fitness.

So I'm going to
give that also a 2.

ANDY GALPIN: Yep, which leaves?

ANDREW HUBERMAN: 1 for recovery.

ANDY GALPIN: Great.

That what you just
laid out is, again,
the most quintessential
split you could have.

In fact, you run this
game on everyone,
they're going to come up with
basically the same answer
unless they don't
work out or whatever.

So a couple of rules here.

Recovery must be at minimum
half of your fitness allocation.

In your case, 2 to 1.

You're fine.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I think I'm
going to say it has to be half.

It has to be 5 out of 10 points.

ANDY GALPIN: No.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: In which
case, it doesn't leave much
for anything else.

ANDY GALPIN: I would
like it to be minimum 20%
of the total, which
means 2 out of 10.

Now, when I say recovery,
I don't simply mean muscle.

I mean you need personal time.

You need meditation.

You need--
ANDREW HUBERMAN: Sleep.

ANDY GALPIN: --sleep.

You need to go to a concert
and get out and see people.

And so like whatever the things
that give you energy back.

Some folks, that's
personal time.

Some folks, that's
social time, whatever
that means to you, right?

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah, I
actually get a lot of energy
from my work.

And so that's why some of these
numbers are a little bit--
you can kind of cloak
the underlying dynamics.

ANDY GALPIN: So here's
what we do from this game.

We look at that and we say, if
that's our split, Andrew, 5, 3,
2, 1--
ANDREW HUBERMAN: 5, 2, 2, 1.

ANDY GALPIN: 5, 2, 2, 1.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I'd
love to be able to put 3
in relationships just because.

But then they need 11 out of--
ANDY GALPIN: Right.

So here's the fun game we play.

You're currently at this.

And you don't get to add to 11.

You have to stay at 10.

Your 10 is different
than my 10 maybe, right?

But 10 is 10, or just--
whatever the maximum
you can actually do.

It's you.

So if we went back to our
training goal, whatever
that goal was for you, and we
went back to our defenders,
we would look at this score
now and say, is 3 out of 10--
fitness is 3, right?

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Fitness is 2.

So it's 5, 2, 2, 1.

ANDY GALPIN: Is 2 out of 10
sufficient to hit that training
goal in that time
frame you described?

And let's say you said, I want
to hit a new PR in my mile
six months from now.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah,
for simplicity's sake
and also because
it's largely true,
I'm going to put myself in what
I refer to as bin A earlier.

My body fat percentage is OK.

It's in the range
that I would like.

But I would like to bring
it down a little bit,
probably gain a little
bit muscle here and there,
keep or gain some endurance.

And, certainly, certainly, my
immediate and long term health
are extremely important to me.

ANDY GALPIN: Great.

So then the question,
and the answer
maybe yes, that this is
the optimal split for you.

If it is not, then we
have to make a choice.

We either alter the goal or the
timeline to make it realistic
or we alter our quadrant.

And then if we're going
to alter our quadrant,
the next step is
critically important.

We need a list of very
specific life actions
that we're going to take that
allows that split to happen.

So if you said, for
example, I want to put three
into relationships, great.

What specific life
actions are you
going to take to pull
one from fitness--
you can't pull any from
recovery or one from business.

And you don't have
to actually answer.

This is--
ANDREW HUBERMAN: Too personal.

ANDY GALPIN: I know you don't
like making these things
about you because--
ANDREW HUBERMAN: Right, that's
the other reason to do it.

And it is a diabolical
trick to insist
that these be whole
integers because I
would have done like a
4.5 for business and a 2.5
for relationships.

But, obviously, you write
the rules on this, not me.

ANDY GALPIN: So you would
just walk that list.

And the list could be
something like I promise to not
work after 7:00 PM
Thursday through Sunday
or whatever the thing is.

I promise I'm going to make
sure that I don't start work
before 8:00 AM or blah,
blah, blah, whatever.

No more trips.

Just make those things
specific and measurable,
not just like I'm
going to work less.

That's never going to go--
what is the very specific life
action you're going to take?

There's going to be alarm
that goes off Tuesday
night at 4:00, 5:00 PM.

And no matter what we--
at Barbell Shrugged, we used
to have a little shirt that
was like D3AT, which
is like drop everything
and train, which means at
3:00 PM in the afternoon,
no matter what's happening,
we dropped everything
and trained because that was
like when you start a business
and you're going, things
just run away from you.

And it is just sort of like,
man, it's not my company.

But those guys are like, we
are a strength and conditioning
company.

And we're not training.

So we had to just
make this hard rule.

And it was just like a
little thing that came up.

And it was easy to say drop
everything and train 3:00.

There you go.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I like
this drop D, E everything, A
and, blank, like it could
be drop everything and--
ANDY GALPIN: Correct.

ANDREW HUBERMAN:
--pick your favorite.

ANDY GALPIN: Totally.

Drop everything and read.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Pick the
relevant-- read, yeah,
absolutely.

I really miss
reading for pleasure.

I would put that
under recovery and--
ANDY GALPIN: Drop
everything and breathe.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Oh, and
breathe you are saying.

Oh, and breathe.

I was saying read.

ANDY GALPIN: I said that too.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah, because
for me, reading is actually
is both recovery
and relationship.

Because oftentimes
in my relationships,
I've insisted-- not insisted.

I certainly didn't insist.

We've had a format of reading
the same book in parallel.

ANDY GALPIN: Oh, great.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah, not
necessarily side by side
but the same book in parallel
and then discussing it.

It's a wonderful
practice or listening
to the same audio book.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah,
it works well.

You can do drop
everything and play.

You're just going
to go do something.

You're going to
play video games.

You're going to go
play with your kid.

You're going to-- do you
want to play with your dog?

It doesn't even have
to actually be play.

But play to you could
signify personal time.

It doesn't really matter.

So, yeah, that's it.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I really
like this drop everything
and blank category
that you probably
shouldn't have more than what?

Two or three of those overall?

ANDY GALPIN: Pretty
much one to two maybe
is where you want
to go after that.

ANDREW HUBERMAN:
So the idea is then
to redistribute the
numbers on this list
but through a very
concrete action.

And I like this drop
everything and blank
because it speaks to the
non-negotiable aspect of it.

ANDY GALPIN: Has to be.

Life will get pushed.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: It's
not a fine time to--
it's not in next
year I'm going to--
ANDY GALPIN: Correct.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I love it.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah, yeah.

When you put those things--
those things, you might
as well just don't even
put it on your list right.

It's not going to happen.

ANDREW HUBERMAN:
Yeah, you're talking
to somebody who loves rules.

Because when they are
non-negotiable rules,
they provide this incredible
organizing force for the brain.

It's really a neuroscience
thing in my mind.

ANDY GALPIN: Totally.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: And, actually,
we did an episode on happiness
where you find that once
people make a decision, if they
eliminate the possibility
of other decisions, like,
literally, the hatch
is closed, that is it--
ANDY GALPIN: Burn the boats.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: --the rates
of subjective happiness,
immediate and long
term happiness,
over time go way, way up.

And so I'm convinced
that the nervous system
doesn't like to keep the valves
on these dopamine circuits
open.

I actually think it diminishes
from the reward component.

And there are actually
some data on this.

Anyway, I don't want
to take us off track.

ANDY GALPIN: The
last part of this,
what we do then is we
take that quadrant.

And we take that list.

And then you're going
to print it physically.

And you're going to
put it in two places.

This could actually
be on your phone.

You don't have to print it.

You can screenshot and be
the background of your phone.

So every time you
click on your phone,
you immediately
see that quadrant.

It's a very clear
reminder of like,
what are my priorities today?

Just a simple little picture.

I also like to put it in
your place of failure.

So for a lot of people, that is
like on their laptop or right
above their workstation.

It's the thing that's
going to lose and beat
your fitness is your job--
typically.

Or it's on your TV, it's
on your Netflix control--
no, sorry, Netflix, no offense.

But you know what I mean?

It's whatever the thing
is that you fail for.

I play too many video games.

Great.

I work too much.

OK, great.

And you put it there.

And you put it also--
the last component
is-- it has to also
be in the hands of somebody
who can hold you accountable.

Wife, training partner,
business partner, whatever.

So it's like, hey,
Andrew, you promised you
were going to do x yourself.

Why are you still here?

You committed to this.

You've got to get out of here.

Someone who will
be like, no, no.

It's drop everything and read.

It's 8:00.

You're supposed to be reading.

You got to go.

You're going to check
back in on that.

Check back again every week.

Check back in-- it doesn't
matter, every month.

And then, you can adjust.

That's fine.

You can always
change the system.

But that has to now change.

You've got to print a new one.

And now it's a whole new
promise you've made to yourself.

So you've got to be
able to hold yourself
accountable to those things.

It's got to be flexible enough
to where it's realistic.

It can't be, I'm not going
to work after 6:00 every day.

Maybe it's just
three days a week.

Maybe it's, on
Saturdays I promise
to work for the first two hours
so I don't work Saturday night.

Or whatever, or the inverse,
I'm not going to work Saturday--
you get it.

You could come up with
a million examples here.

So that's the system
we use to make sure
that we have now properly
identified where we're going.

We found a roadmap to that.

And now we know exactly how
we're going to stay on track.

I have to take this opportunity
to add one more thing
to our drop everything list.

And you gave the
example of DEAR,
which is maybe drop
everything and read,
or drop everything and relax.

Or another example,
I have to add a DEAL,
which is drop everything
and-- this is for you, Lex--
love.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Actually,
one of the advantages
of having a dog
or having children
is that the drop everything
and love is often
enforced by the faces
of those that you love.

They just show up in whatever
space you happen to be in.

ANDY GALPIN: Especially
if you work from home.

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ANDY GALPIN: Let's move on
to the next one, shall we?

Number three here is going to
be what I call calendar or time
frame.

So it's going back a
little bit and saying,
you've decided on
this goal and you've
identified the defenders.

Now we need to come up
with a realistic time
frame for how long it's going
to take to accomplish that goal.

And when you do that, you need
to look at your life schedule.

And what I mean by
that is do you have
important deadlines coming up?

Do you have a holiday?

Do you have a trip?

Do you have travel?

Do your children have
something coming up?

You need to take all
that information.

And I literally
lay out a calendar.

And I write all those dates
in a physical calendar first.

And the reason I'm
suggesting this is you
want to work your training
backwards around that.

As we've been discussing,
life will win.

If you try to plan a
training program that
is five days a week 90 minutes
a day, and all of a sudden,
you look two weeks from
now and you realize
you've got a grant deadline.

And then you've got to take
two days to go to Austin.

It's just foolish.

You're going to fail.

And then you're going to quit.

And you're going to
be like, man, again,
my training program failed.

So you need to
figure out what are
the non-negotiables are
in that business quadrant,
and just not be foolish.

So let's imagine you're
going to plot out, say,
a 12-week training phase.

And you want to-- you've
decided on this goal.

And then you look
and you realize
in the middle of
this 12-week span,
week five is really
hectic and chaotic.

Or you realize that this is
a quarter in which something
important is due.

Maybe we want to
either adjust the goal.

Or what we really do in
this step is going on
to actually step
number four, which
is choose the number of days
per week you can exercise
and the length in
terms of amount of time
you can truly afford to train.

I would rather you underestimate
that than overestimate it.

So you, again, you
look at the calendar.

You put all these
non-negotiables,
the deadlines you cannot
move in the calendar.

And then you say, look,
based on this, realistically,
I can conservatively
train three days a week
for 60 minutes total.

And that includes
the time I walk
into the gym, my warm-up,
my down-regulation breathing
at the end, and
then me getting back
either in the shower and back.

Because really, now
it's maybe 90 minutes
by the time you traveled,
you transitioned,
you picked back up on work, you
showered, you ate, et cetera.

That time just
runs away from you.

And all of sudden it was
a two and 1/2 hour thing
even though it was
a 45-minute workout.

So you really need to
figure that thing out.

If you're a few weeks
in and you realize, ooh,
I actually have a little
more time than I thought,
you can always train more.

You can do another thing.

You can add up.

But what you don't
want to do is set up
a program that is requiring you
to do certain exercises on one
days or certain styles
of training on another,
and then you constantly
miss one of those days.

I thought I could
do four days a week,
but one day a week something's
getting pulled out.

That's just going to
keep you off schedule.

It's going to make you
feel like a failure.

And you're going to run into
problems with your training.

So schedule three if you're
sure you can get three.

And if there's an extra day, we
can always do other fun stuff.

So that's really
step three and four.

Figure out your life events
over the course of this time.

How many days a
week can you train?

And then how long in terms
of minutes per workout.

Notice, we haven't selected
a single exercise yet.

We haven't worried
about how heavy,
rest intervals, all those
modifiable variables.

You don't need to
pick those later.

First, where are we going.

Second, how are we going to get
there, which is the quadrant
and identifying of defenders.

And then the third is,
what are the restrictions
I need to place on myself
in terms of program design
based on how often and
how long I can work out.

That is going to
allow you to go back
to some of the previous
episodes and go, man,
you gave us all kinds of ideas.

How do I know which
one to choose?

This is your answer.

You're going to choose based
upon the limitations of time
and frequency.

So if you've already said,
we're in-- let's imagine
we're in bucket A, or
bucket C.

It doesn't matter.

And you go, look,
the most I can afford
with where I'm at with
what's going on in my life
is three days a week.

Well, we automatically
know we're
going to have to start
training-- choosing a training
style that's limited
to three days a week.

Don't even worry about the
four or five day stuff.

Those are off the table.

And now we're on-- so
we've placed restrictions.

It goes back to
that concept of I
think it's one of your
podcast's guests, Jocko.

It's just like, hey, structure
gives us actually some freedom.

So by creating some
restrictions here,
we're a little more free
to go, I only actually
have to choose between A and B.

Rather than sitting down and
going, man, there's all--
I'm 20 hours into this
exercise podcast thing.

And there's so many options.

Which one to pick?

Well, you create a little
bit of restriction.

And now it's easier to go,
oh, my only option is A or B.

And there we go.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: So
that's number four.

ANDY GALPIN: That's
three and four.

At that point, once
we're good there,
now what you want to do us
go to step number five, which
is actually select your
exercises or your movements.

And this can be as simple as
selecting a kettlebell swing,
or running, or swimming.

It could be your
entire exercise mode.

What you want to do
with exercise selection
here is make sure that you're
balancing those exercises
across the whole week.

Not within necessarily
every workout.

So if you have four days
a week, five days a week,
you want to look at
the exercise selection
and say, OK, I need
to have somewhat
of a reasonable balance between
movement patterns, or muscle
groups, or front and
back, side to side,
however you're thinking of
it, just across that week.

So again, say we're on
a three-day program.

And we're in either
of the buckets--
any of the buckets, really.

And we say, OK, great.

Maybe it's not ideal if all I
select is cycling every day.

That's not a lot of balance.

I don't notice anything.

There's no upper
body work there.

There's no torso work.

There's no other positions.

So maybe I'm going to
really focus on cycling.

So I will do only
cycling two days a week.

But that third day I
need to pick something
for the other movement areas.

And that's going
to make sure you
stay in a reasonable balance.

If you have an exercise
that you like, great.

If you have exercise
you have access to.

Again, maybe the gym is
a giant pain in the ass.

And so you can say, look.

That's too far away.

The closest one is 45
minutes there and back.

So maybe I'm going
to restrict myself
to only kettlebell, and
bands, and running, because I
can do those in my house.

Awesome.

We've actually
created some freedom
because we gave ourselves
some restriction.

And now we just
have to figure out
how am I going to give some
movement patterns somewhat
balanced across my three days.

So really, when it comes
to exercise choice,
it is selecting the patterns
that you know how to execute.

Giving yourself, again,
somewhat of a balance
between the muscles, and
the joints, and the movement
patterns.

Making sure that
you are specifically
targeting any muscle group
or movement that you want.

So making sure you
want to improve muscle
size in your glutes,
you better make
sure some of the exercises
you're doing at least one day
a week you're feeling
in your actual glutes.

So you can check that box.

It doesn't have to
be every exercise.

It probably shouldn't.

It doesn't even have
to be every single day.

But make sure it's checked
off somewhere on that list.

And the last one is,
is there a strategy
in which you can progress it?

So if you're like,
I'm just going
to do bodyweight exercises.

OK, great.

Well, how are you going
to progress those?

In the case of bodyweight,
it's really hard to add load.

Maybe you can put a weight
vest on or something.

But then, maybe you don't have
that, or that's an extra thing,
or that can only go so far.

So what's my progression
strategy going to be?

Well, in this case, maybe you
just increase the complexity
by going from two legs,
like say a bodyweight squat,
to a single leg squat, or you
just increase repetitions,
or you increase time
you're going to hold it.

My point is, your
progression strategy
will be based upon
the restrictions
that you place based
on availability
and things like that.

The last thing I
always recommend here
in terms of exercise
progression,
to make sure that
you can continue
to do these things while
lowering your risk of injury,
both in the short-term
and long-term,
is to progress your exercise
complexity in this fashion.

So make sure, number one, you
can do the exercise properly
with assistance.

So let's imagine
a scenario where
we're going to try to squat.

So give yourself-- put your
hands on a bench or something
like that.

Now, can you execute that squat
perfectly with assistance?

So you're holding
onto something.

Great.

If you can't, then don't
progress past that.

Don't go now to a
barbell back squat
if you can't do it correctly
when you have assistance.

But let's assume most
people can do that.

OK, great.

Now you can move on to the
next step, which is can you
do it well without assistance.

So this would be
bodyweight only.

Check, cool.

We're good there.

Now you can go
ahead and move on.

Can you do it well with
an added e-centric load?

So in this particular case,
if we're learning a squat,
we can do it well when I hold
on to something, that's great.

Now I can do it well
with just my bodyweight.

Now if I put a
little bit of weight
on, whether it's a kettlebell in
the front like a goblet squat,
or dumbbells to the side,
or whatever you want to do,
can I lower it and
go all the way down
and stay in perfect position?

If you can do that, great.

You're allowed to go to the
next step, which is can you
hold it isometrically.

So can you go all the
way down and then hold
that bottom position?

What you don't want to
do is start adding load,
or speed, or fatigue
if you're going down
to the bottom position
of the movement
and you are out of control.

We really want to avoid this.

So I want you to show
me you can go down
and you can lower the
weight under control.

You can hold it in that
position under control.

If we're clear there, now we
can add the concentric portion.

You can now go ahead,
you can lower it,
you can hold that
position of most danger,
and now you can move up
at whatever speed we want.

We are all good there.

Once you can show
me those things,
you can add the last two
steps which are now speed--
if you choose to--
and the last one,
which is fatigue.

I would really discourage
people from doing exercises
to fatigue, especially with
a moderate or high load,
unless you can promise me you
can do these first six steps.

If you can, you can basically
go hog wild with your training,
and your chances of
injury are very low.

Again, both acute injury,
as well as long-term injury,
which is just sort of
like my joints ache,
and all of a sudden my shoulder
hurts, and things like that.

That's really what
I'm looking for.

And once you're clear there,
you can train pretty hard.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I
really like this.

Because, recently, I was
showing somebody how to use a--
in this case, it was
a hack squat machine.

I notice they were
very timid of getting
into a deep squat position.

And they cited a
previous knee injury,
which has long since healed.

ANDY GALPIN: Right.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: But even
with proper foot placement
and everything,
you just tell, they
were getting ginger about
it as they approached
that bottom position.

But over time, with
pauses at the bottom,
they've become very comfortable.

And now actually are going
well below 90 degrees
angle between femur
and lower leg.

ANDY GALPIN: Excellent.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: So it was clear
that it wasn't something range
of motion limited
or it was just--
it was a mental thing, but
a logical one for them.

Now, after what you
just said, I think
a better strategy
that I could have used
would have been to have them
get into that position, just
no weight at all, maybe
nothing on the sled,
and then slowly
working up from there
as opposed to doing what
we did in our case, which
was to just convince
them that they
were much stronger than
they thought they were.

We eventually got there.

But I'm realizing that there
was far too much mental anguish
involved in that process.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah.

This whole progression,
by the way,
this can all happen
in one session.

If you can check the boxes.

In that example, you may
have been fine to jump there.

It may have just been a,
hey, you're fine here.

Get through it.

Oh, OK.

This whole progression
might take two years.

I mean, this really
depends on your background,
if you actually have injury
history, your comfort,
your confidence,
all these things.

So you don't need to
worry about rushing
through that progression.

You don't even need to
get all the way to the end
if you don't want, especially
with speed and things
like that.

But again, it can happen.

It doesn't have
to be like, well,
it's a month of this, a month--
well, no.

If they feel great
and you can go
through one to seven
in five minutes,
then you're good to go.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Number six.

ANDY GALPIN: Number
six now is just order.

So you know how many days per
week you're going to work out.

You know how long
they're going to take.

You've selected all the
exercises you need to get done.

You've balanced that
across the week.

Now you just need to
put them in order.

And the easy answer
here is generally
do what's most important
first in the workout.

There is some minor interference
effect of some other things
there.

But the reality of it is, if
you do the priority first,
you're probably going to be OK.

So whether this priority
is a muscle group.

So in the example,
you want to make
sure your glutes get trained.

Maybe do it first.

If you're trying to
maximize your back squat,
you may not want to do a
bunch of glute exercises
to fatigue first.

But that's not the
priority we picked.

We picked a different
one, which is
buckets A, B, and C.

OK, great.

By doing it first, you
told me the priority
was to make sure I do
something for my glutes.

And then I would also like to
get my back squat a little bit
stronger or whatever.

Fine.

The same thing could be done
for your endurance training.

You could do your endurance
training before your lifting
if you understand
that that means
you might be compromising
your lifting quality
of the workout a little bit.

But you might be
fine with that if you
say the endurance work is
more important right now.

Amazing.

You don't know
the answer to that
though if you hadn't gone
through steps one through four.

And that's why those
things are critical.

So it makes what we call
chaos management, which
is things happen in the moment.

I don't know what to do.

What should I choose?

That decision
becomes really clear
because you can always go back
to the beginning of my priority
was this.

Then therefore, that's
my choice today.

So it provides a very
simple set of instructions
for when the workout
gets cut short,
when your workout
has to be in a hotel,
and any number of things
that pop up in real life,
whether, again, you're an
athlete or non-athlete.

Either way, life will get
in the way at some point.

So you need to have rules
and a system that says,
when this happens, I
go right back to this.

And that's my choice.

Done.

I'm moving on.

No decision to make here.

It's already been determined
a week ago, five weeks ago.

We're often rolling.

So the order, again,
is pretty simple.

Just put the one that
is most important first.

Now, I know you like
to do legs on Monday.

That's great.

I actually love that too.

I do the same thing
generally, because
to me, that's almost always
the most important thing.

If I miss a bicep workout,
I'm probably fine.

But I really don't like missing
the big movement pattern.

So I make sure that those
happen on a day that
tend to be more stable for me.

Mondays are generally
pretty stable.

Things get chaotic as the
week moves along for me.

Others might be the opposite.

Others might want to
go, hey, I'm actually
going to keep Monday as
my flexible day or off day
because I like to get
a lot of my work done,
get that cleared so I
can have-- oh, sure.

Work it around you.

Some people love to
train on Saturdays
because it's their most
free, some people hate it.

Sure.

You tell me, what is
the biggest priority,
and what are you the most fresh?

Monday, Tuesday,
it doesn't matter.

It depends on your
work schedule.

Maybe you work the weekends.

I don't know.

You decide what
day of the week are
you generally the
most consistent,
the most consistent schedule,
and the most consistent energy.

And do the thing that is
most important on that day.

It doesn't matter Monday,
Tuesday, day one, day three.

We were sort of talking
about this earlier.

But you actually don't even
have to do a week schedule.

Our brains tend to like
to go year, month, week.

But a lot of folks
will even just
run this thing in terms of a
seven or nine-day schedule.

In fact, we ran a
nine-day training schedule
for one of my Major
League Baseball players.

And he's eight or so
years into his career.

And he's hitting
all-time PRs in velocity.

And he's very, very good.

And it was a nine-day
training cycle.

And we ran that for
the entire season.

So it doesn't have to
be a seven-day split.

But it tends to work
for a lot of people
because most people have a
fairly consistent schedule
across the seven days.

So pick the thing
that is most important
and do it first,
and do it on the day
of the week that is
most consistent for you
in terms of schedule and energy.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I really
like what you're describing.

I should just say that one
of the reasons I put legs
on Monday is because
I tend to get
enough sleep on the weekends.

I generally get enough sleep
during the middle of the week.

But oftentimes,
things will come up.

I can be pretty sure, however,
that I've, quote unquote,
caught up on my sleep
on the weekends.

This notion of
catching up on sleep
is a little dicey
scientifically.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: But I tend
to be pretty rested by Monday
morning.

ANDY GALPIN: Right.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: And actually,
my week begins on Sunday.

And Sundays are when I
get my long form cardio.

ANDY GALPIN: There you go.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: So those two
are really non-negotiable.

And the reason that long
form cardio is on Sunday
is that it can take
many different forms.

It can take a hike
with a weighted vest.

It can take the form of a jog.

It can be done
with other people.

It can be family time.

It can be time with
friends and so on.

And that's pretty hard to do
during the middle of the week
or pretty hard to
ensure, at least for me.

I also find that by
bookending the week
with some non-negotiable days
of training on Sunday, Monday,
then if the week
gets busy Tuesday,
Wednesday or even sometimes
Thursday with travel
and things like that, one can
catch up toward the weekend.

It's not ideal.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I mean,
ideally, it's spaced out.

But really, this
isn't about what I do.

This is really
just to underscore
the principle you
described, which
is, I have a very clear
sense now over three decades
or so of training and
three decades or so
of being involved in academics,
and science, and work, of when
I tend to be most
rested, when I tend
to have some flexibility
in my schedule.

And also, when I'm
trying to combine fitness
with some of my
social engagements,
which is actually quite fun.

One thing I note is
that the four boxes
that you mentioned before,
work, relationships, fitness,
and recovery.

Some of them do
have some crossover.

ANDY GALPIN: They all do.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: A hike
with family or friends
is both relationship
and fitness, and so on.

But I love the principle.

Because anything that
can add consistency,
as you pointed it out, is
going to greatly increase
the probability of
reaching one's goals.

That's sort of an obvious one.

But in an earlier episode
you also said something
that I wrote down
and is really still
ringing in my mind, especially
now, which is that consistency
always beats intensity.

ANDY GALPIN: Correct.

Yeah, absolutely.

We used to do a thing--
when I was training NFL players
for the combine many years
ago--
where Saturdays were supposed
to be the day they came in
and we did the
most regeneration.

So this is when they
get body work done.

And we do hot cold contrast
and sort of all these things.

And our attendance was like 1%.

Nobody showed up.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: For a massage?

ANDY GALPIN: Nobody showed up.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Wow.

I'm surprised.

ANDY GALPIN: Seems right.

But remember--
ANDREW HUBERMAN: I
love a good massage.

ANDY GALPIN: Of course.

But remember,
you're 18 years old.

You're likely to
be getting millions
of dollars handed to you in
the next few weeks or months.

And--
ANDREW HUBERMAN: He's not
referring to me, by the way.

ANDY GALPIN: No, no.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I'm actually
quite a bit older than 18.
[LAUGHS] And I'm not getting
handed millions of dollars
each week.

ANDY GALPIN: Right.

So I would think that.

But those folks, they
recover super fast.

They've never really had that.

And also, Friday night,
kind of enticing.

And so, nothing was there.

And the strategy then
was, what if we instead
of having a important hard
training day on Saturday
we transition and it is
only things they want to do.

So we basically
identified, what are
the things in training
you love the most,
and let's do those Saturdays.

And it turns out for those
folks, no surprise here,
it was what we
call the gun show.

So they would come into the gym.

And we would literally do
nothing but biceps and triceps.

They'd just get a pump.

And then the deal was
though, you come in--
and literally, it would come in
is, we would pick three guys.

Say you, you, and you.

You pick your favorite
bicep exercise.

You pick your favorite one.

You pick your favorite one.

You three over there, you
pick your favorite tricep,
tricep, tricep.

And we just run a big circuit.

Like this is, how many reps?

I don't know.

I don't care.

How many sets?

I don't even care.

Just pump away.

I don't even care.

We chose small muscle groups.

Not really going to
interfere with much.

We're training them for
the NFL combine, which is--
it's not a-- it's a legs
performance, basically.

So it's like, if they smash
their biceps and triceps
on a Saturday, it's
not going to influence
what we did on Monday.

So recovery wasn't an issue.

Once we finish the
gun show though,
now you have to go
do your regen stuff.

So if you need chiro work,
you need physical therapy,
whatever you're going to do.

So we would get
them in the building
with the low-hanging fruit.

And then we would actually
get them to do their work.

You can do the same thing.

And I honestly do
the same thing.

I tend to do either--
if I'm going to do an
upper or lower split,
I'm going to do that
stuff either Friday
night or Saturday.

Because it's very
difficult for me
to do a hard long workout
Friday night or even Friday
morning for that matter.

The same thing Saturday.

I wake up.

And now it's like,
it's family mode.

It's kid things.

I want to do stuff.

I want-- man.

But I can usually convince
myself to be like, all right,
just go in there
and go 20 minutes
and get your upper
body stuff done.

All right.

I can walk myself
into that mentally.

It's harder to walk
yourself into your five
sets of five Deadlift.

It's sort of just like, whoa, I
ain't got that in me right now.

My high intensity
intervals, the max stuff,
I don't have that right now.

So I'll either go for my long
steady state stuff, which
is like, I'm going on the bike.

I'm riding down to the beach,
or coming back, nasal only,
I can get myself to go
for a bike ride, whatever.

So I picked the thing that
I'm likely to do on the days
where I'm probably going to
be my weakest, quote unquote.

Not physically, but
motivation-wise.

For a long time I try to--
it just got stuck in a way
where my harder stuff
was Friday nights.

And I'm just like,
why am I doing this?

I was having like
a 50% success rate.

Just like we were having
a no percent success rate
with the NFL guys on Saturday.

So you have to be
a little bit tough.

You have to grind sometimes.

You have to get some
motivation and go after it.

But you also have
to be like, well,
this is just stupid planning.

Why put yourself
in a position where
you're just failing
over, and over,
and over, when I could
move it and go, look,
those sessions are going to
be things that are easier.

They don't require as much gusto
to get up and get them done.

I get those things
done 90% of the time.

Because the worst case I
can be like, all right,
we're going to go
do a family thing.

Give me 20 minutes.

I'm just going to run up
there and smash upper body.

And you don't need--
I need a 20 minute warm-up.
[LAUGHS] It's like, I can
just jump into those things
if I had to.

If I feel great, then I can
still go do something else,
or I could do more, I
could do a longer session.

But you're sort of
immune to any situation.

So I would book-end those,
I guess, is what I'm saying.

What's the day you're going to
have the best day, and what's
the day you generally
have the worst?

And put the programs
around those situations.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah.

I love the idea of
identifying the friction
points, the high friction
and low friction days.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah.

ANDREW HUBERMAN:
Friction meaning anything
that impedes you from
training consistently or well.

And there are so many factors
that ratchet into that-- sleep,
other social engagements, work.

Friday night, I also
find it tough to do
any kind of training.

I do cardiovascular training.

I do interval type training
on Fridays typically.

But there's a lot of
cumulative fatigue and stress
that happens across the week.

ANDY GALPIN: Right on.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: And
usually, for a long time,
gosh, more than a
decade now, I've
been telling myself
that Saturday
is the day that I try to
reduce my cortisol as much as
possible from the week.

ANDY GALPIN: There you go.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: And then
Sunday is the day that I
enjoy that low cortisol state.

And that's actually what opened
up into the long, slow run.

ANDY GALPIN: Amazing.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I
actually like to think
of myself as a bit of a
mule during those long runs.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I actually have
a shirt that has a sloth on it
that I wear to remind myself
to go slowly on those runs.

Not that I ever run that fast.

But there's the
whole mindset around
it is to be a bit of a mule,
just kind of moving through it.

And the fatigue
factor is more one
of at first there's just
a little bit of boredom.

But then, I've noticed,
there's a whole different set
of mental scapes that open up
under different training types.

And this is maybe
something we get
into a little bit in a
future episode or discussion.

When you train really intensely
for short periods of time one
way, your mind goes
into a particular state.

When you do long
duration training,
you're thinking and
indeed even the way
it affects sleep patterns
is also very different.

I think one of the great futures
for neuroscience and exercise
science in collaboration
is to identify
how different patterns
of physical movement
relate to different patterns
of thinking and vice versa.

ANDY GALPIN: Amazing.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Anyway,
something maybe to just earmark
for a future conversation.

But there's clearly
a relationship there.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah.

Well, when we certainly know
of a pretty clear relationship
between even what we would
classify as zone five exercise
and deep sleep.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: So a zone
five again being you're
breathing a lot
through your mouth
because you have to in order
to bring in enough oxygen
to offset the
acidity created by--
[LAUGHTER]
ANDY GALPIN: The carbon.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Exactly.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah.

This is the high heart rate.

So I mean, if you're
going to look at it
and hit a number, looking for
something like 30-plus minutes
a week being in the top
10% of your heart rate.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: That
impacts deep sleep.

ANDY GALPIN: Is going
to positively impact
deep sleep, as long as it's done
very far away from deep sleep.

So you don't want
to do that at night.

So you want-- in terms of time.

So if you hit those
numbers earlier in the day,
oftentimes that will
enhance deep sleep.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah, I
was looking at some papers
recently.

And the number that
emerged from those papers
was that unless it's
low intensity exercise,
trying to exercise about
six hours or more away
from your sleep
time would be ideal.

ANDY GALPIN: Bingo.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Now, that
said, for those of you that
have to hit the gym or go
for a run in the evening
and then are trying to fall
asleep four to six hours later,
I wouldn't want that
statement to impede
your regular exercising.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah.
there's an easy trick to that.

Just finish it with
down-regulation breathing.

So that's one of our things,
that if you-- because that
is a realistic situation.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Right.

Finish work at 5:00, or even
6:00, and then by the time
you're training or running or
whatever you want to call it,
it's a 7:30, 8:00,
you're home at 9:00.

You're eating, and
then everyone's
like, you can't eat
two hours before bed.

Pretty soon you run into a
number of different collision
points that make you
wonder whether or not
you're doing everything
wrong or if it's
really worth training at all.

ANDY GALPIN: 100%.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Now, I
would argue it's better
to train than not to train.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: But
provided that you can still
get to sleep.

ANDY GALPIN: 100%.

So you have to walk a
little bit of a game.

We run into this issue
with the NBA players.

You're playing games at
6:00 at night that start.

Major League Baseball is
a 7:05, 7:10 pitch, right?

ANDREW HUBERMAN: That's right.

ANDY GALPIN: And
also, by the way,
we're changing time
zones every five days.

UFC fighters and such, were
usually training twice a day.

There is no option
to train, or I mean,
we are training
twice a day always.

So we have to come up
with strategies for that.

And there's other
non-athlete scenarios,
of course, where it's like,
there is no other option here.

Cool.

So what we do is a
couple of things.

Number one, the further
away you can make it
from sleep, the
better if possible.

We do need to train, though,
around the same time you're
going to be playing.

That has to happen.

So the harder and longer
we go in the training
session, the harder
and longer we
go in our down-regulation
post-exercise.

And that is, in my estimation,
the number one lever
you can pull that can help.

Now, if it really does
start crushing sleep,
you're going to have to make
a critical decision there.

In general, it's not a good
reason to not exercise.

But maybe you restrict to
only a couple of days a week
you go all the way
up in intensity.

And the rest of
the days maybe 70%,
you stay in this kind
of a working zone.

Awesome.

Maybe it's a longer
down-regulation.

Maybe there's other
strategies you can do.

But yeah.

You want to be
careful of-- and we've
had this situation a number
of times where it's just
sleep complaints, sleep
complaints, sleep complaints.

We run full sleep studies
on them in their house.

We do the whole thing
with absolute rest.

We come in.

We do the whole
thing eye tracking,
biomarkers, the whole thing.

And it's like, oh,
you just need to stop
doing intervals at 8:00 PM.

ANDREW HUBERMAN:
And I would add to
that, another
incentive for being
able to train with
or without caffeine
is that it's very clear that
even if you can fall asleep
after ingesting caffeine
in the preceding hours that
caffeine consumed in the,
gosh, even 12 but really eight
to 10 hours, four hours
prior to bedtime really
disrupts the
architecture of sleep.

So if you critically rely on
caffeine in order to train,
whatever your training
might be, and you
know that sleep is
important for recovery,
well, then it's pretty obvious
where I'm going with this.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: So having
that flexibility is vitally
important.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah.

You've probably
also covered this.

But you can actually
measure that directly.

So by eye tracking
patterns, you can actually
identify the effects
that caffeine
has on sleep independent
of sleep time or not.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Right.

There are never
positive effects.

ANDY GALPIN: Correct.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: That said,
I am a proponent of caffeine
early in the day.

And caffeine does
have a lot of--
well, it's
anti-neurodegenerative.

As long as you're
not getting anxiety,
it's pro-performance,
both mental and physical
performance.

But, of course, if you
do not need caffeine,
if you're one of these mutants
that do not need caffeine
in order to go about
your daily living
with focus and intensity,
then, by all means,
don't start taking caffeine.

ANDY GALPIN: I'm
not the hugest fan.

I am scientifically.
100% or more.

Personally, it does--
I don't do well on it.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Well, you seem
to ride a little bit more what
we would call a
sympathetic tone, shifted
towards more alert.

I tend to be
naturally a bit more
like my bulldog Costello
was, a little bit more
on the mellow sleepy side.

And caffeine just puts me right
at that alert but calm place.

And I can get away
with drinking it--
I wouldn't say a ridiculous,
but a fair amount of caffeine
and remain there.

But I do restrict it until the
time right up about 2:00 PM
at the latest is really when I
were trying to drink caffeine.

Number seven.

ANDY GALPIN: Great.

So number seven and
eight are pretty simple.

This is now choose the
intensity and the volume.

So we've discussed
those at length
in the previous episodes.

We probably don't have
the time to go back
over all those details.

So remember the adaptation
you're training for
and pick the appropriate rep
range, total amount of sets,
as well as the
intensity to then get
the corresponding adaptation.

All you have to do is
select those things.

In terms of progression
through a week,
the rule of thumb
we say for intensity
is something around
three 3% per week.

For volume, it will depend on
what you're doing a little bit,
but any time you cross
more than 10% per week,
you're going to start
running into problems.

So I like 5% better.

It doesn't need to
be as low as three.

You can jump up
much more than that.
5% to 7% is better.

So if you are
doing, say, running,
because the numbers
make it easy,
and you're doing 10
miles per week total.

And if you were to go up to
11 miles the next week, great.

You're right around 10%.

But what you wouldn't
want to do is say,
I'm running 10 miles this week.

And I did maybe four Monday,
three Wednesday, three Friday.

So four, three, and
three, you got your 10.

Then you wouldn't want
to add a mile every day.

So Monday, instead of
doing four, I did five.

Wednesday instead of
doing three I did four.

Friday instead of
doing three I did four.

What you actually did is
you went from 10 to 13,
which is a much higher jump
than the 10% prescribed.

So the same thing would be
true for lifting weights.

The same thing is actually
true for calories and trying
to add them, et cetera.

So the body tends to
not handle those things
as well jumping more
than 10% per week.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: So keeping
with this idea of increasing
progressive overload, being 10%
more over some period of time,
am I correct in assuming that
I want to identify one, maybe
two meaningful variables
and progressing
that or those variables?

ANDY GALPIN: So
progressive overload
can come in the form of any
of the modifiable variables.

So you could increase the
complexity of the movement.

You could increase the
intensity or the load.

You can increase the volume by
either more sets, more reps,
or more total
exercises in a day.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: What
about time under tension?

ANDY GALPIN: You can
also manipulate how--
the tempo of each repetition.

You can also manipulate how
many times per day you train.

So you can manipulate frequency.

You can also manipulate
rest intervals.

So you can progressively
load any of these things.

Increase intensity.

Run a little bit faster.

Complete the same amount
of work slightly faster.

Put 5% more on the barbell,
or the load, or the handle,
or whatever you going to do.

That's the simple way.

If you want to think
about volume, in the case
of endurance work is simple--
mileage, time, whatever.

In the case of lifting,
all you have to do
is take the amount
of repetitions
you're doing per set,
multiply it by the sets,
add that all up.

So if you're doing three sets
of 10, that's 30 repetitions.

If you did three exercises,
you just did 90 repetitions.

Put that number down for Monday.

Put that number
down for Wednesday.

Put that number down for Friday.

Add that total up.

So say you did 90, 90, 90.

You would look and say, my total
number of repetitions this week
is 270.

If I want to go
up 5%, then I need
to go up another 15 or
so total repetitions.

Great that's all we have to do.

That's the increase.

You may keep the load exactly
the same, keep the exercises
the same, change nothing else.

But you want to add 15 more
total reps for your week.

And you may choose
to do that by adding
one more repetition per set.

Close enough.

So last week I did
three sets of 10.

This week I'm going
to three sets of 11.

It can be as simple as that.

Again, it can be complex.

I walked you through--
it can be any
of the modifiable variables.

But the progression I just
laid out is fairly simple,
and it's honestly the one I
recommend for most people,
just because it
will avoid confusion
and it will avoid people
taking massive leaps in volume.

So the typical strategy
I would recommend here
is increasing load or
intensity, or a little bit
of a combination, slowly
for about six or so weeks
and then taking what we
generally call a de-load.

So back down to maybe 70%.

Whatever that number
is you've been doing.

So you did three sets of
10 and you worked yourself
all the way up to
three sets of 15.

Back that down and maybe
we'll do two sets of eight
for the week.

And then we'll come
back the following week
and go back and do the
highest we've done.

Now we're all of a sudden we're
going to do four sets of 12
or something like that.

So if you get these
little de-loads every--
depending on what you're
doing, four weeks or so--
you should be in a spot
where you can continually
progress for a very long
time without either burning
out or overloading,
and over-stressing,
and injury pattern.

So the simple way, pick
intensity or volume.

And just go up slightly every
week for a short span of time,
generally around six weeks.

And then you come back
and change your strategy
if you'd like.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Because you
mentioned sets and repetitions
here, I just wanted
to remind folks
that in the episode that we did
on strength and hypertrophy--
and that also included speed--
there was a description of a
terrific program for strength,
which is the three
by five program,
or three to five
program, as it's called,
which is to select three
to five exercises performed
for three to five repetitions
three to five times
per week with three
to five minutes rest
in between those exercises.

ANDY GALPIN: For
three to five sets.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: And
if I recall correctly,
the protocol for generating
hypertrophy, muscle growth,
is to perform a minimum of 10
and probably more like 15 to 20
sets per muscle group per week.

And that can be done in a single
session per muscle per week.

So one could train,
for instance,
quadriceps one day
per week, as long
as you're getting that
volume of sets per week.

Or it could be divided up across
two or three different sessions
for that individual
muscle group.

Of course, people are going to
target all their major muscle
groups and hopefully some of
the minor muscle groups as well.

And as I recall, the
number of repetitions
that can generate
hypertrophy is quite broad,
anywhere from six
repetitions all the way up
to 30 repetitions.

But by the end of the set,
it should be to failure
or close to failure
with good form.

Is that correct?

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah.

And we would say,
close to failure
is probably most appropriate.

You can actually
reach failure maybe
on a few of the
sets, maybe the end.

And probably best to choose
that with the exercises that
are safer, not that any exercise
is particularly unsafe if you
do it appropriately.

But you may not want
to go to true failure
on every set for the
more complex, larger,
riskier exercises.

So hedge pretty close to
failure, but not all the way.

ANDREW HUBERMAN:
And I realized I
forgot to mention rest
intervals between sets.

It follows that if a
large range of repetitions
are performed that a large range
of rest intervals are allowed,
meaning that there could be
rest intervals between sets
of as low as 30
seconds between sets
or as high of two or three
minutes, depending on the loads
that one is using.

And that, of course, will scale
with the number of repetitions.

ANDY GALPIN: Excellent.

In fact, that leads
me into step number
nine of designing your own
training program, which
is you've decided on a goal.

We've worked our calendar out.

We've figured out how
many days per week
and how long we're going to
work out in those sessions.

We then went and
selected our exercises.

We balance them across
the movement patterns
and the muscle
groups that we need
so we're not causing excessive
stress on the same exact joint
or muscle group over time.

We then ordered our
exercises based on priority.

Because of that, we've
identified our goal.

We went back and we
selected the volume,
which is the repetitions per
set, the total amount of sets,
and the load per set that
matched the goal that we wanted
to get or the adaptation.

Now, all we have to do is fill
in the rest intervals, which
reflect back, again, the goal.

So generally higher rest
intervals, which means
time that you rest
between your sets.

Higher somewhere between two
to five minutes for things
like speed, power, and strength.

Perhaps a little bit lower,
although as you mentioned,
it could also stay
high for hypertrophy.

And then for endurance, you
follow the rest interval
that reflects the type
of endurance training
that you'd like to get.

That's walked us through
one through nine.

We're almost done.

We've put together a pretty
nice little protocol.

It should be well rounded.

It should be effective.

We've also talked about how to
progress it from week to week,
keeping it within, again, four
to six weeks, maybe up to eight
before we then take a back-off.

The very last
thing we have to do
to make sure this training
program is customized to you,
your goal, and your situation,
which is then going to enhance
your likelihood of
adherence and consistency,
as well as increase the
likelihood of effectiveness
is, we just have to do
a little bit of what
we call chaos management.

Which is take a quick
moment to think through,
this program looks great.

But if I had to
nitpick it, where
are the possible
chances of failure?

And you just want to
think about where would I
predict things would go wrong?

And if anything pops out to you.

Try to come up with your
solution at the beginning.

And this could be
a number of things.

So maybe you've
picked an exercise
and you realize, man,
I really actually
don't like that exercise.

Or maybe you look
at the schedule
now that it's laid
out in front of you.

You look at your work schedule.

And you're like, ah, maybe
that's a bit aggressive.

I don't know.

It could be any
number of things.

But it is a useful exercise to
just think through everything
realistically.

I typically just-- it's the
adage I teach my graduate
students--
before we hit Submit,
we're going to sleep.

So it's there.

It's ready.

We're going to take 12 hours.

We're going to wake
up the next day
and look at it again and go,
are we sure we're good here?

Yep.

Make adjustments if you need.

If not, if you feel
confident, then
hit send and cross your fingers.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah.

We were referring to
submitting the manuscript.

It's interesting you say that.

I have a statement that I
always make to people in my lab.

They hit Submit,
and they always say
that you realize you're going
to wake up tomorrow morning.

There's going to be
an email in your inbox
that something was
formatted incorrectly
and you're going to spend
tomorrow reformatting
and submitting again.

So I've also learned that
every project is actually
two projects--
ANDY GALPIN: I'm sorry.

I'm trying to not die over
here and interrupt you.
[LAUGHS] It's true.

You have no--
ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah.

It's true.

I've done this enough times.

I've done this many
dozens of times.

And then there's also
another truism of science
which is that
there's the project,
there's the scientific question.

And then the paper is
yet another project.

And I actually think this is
an analogy that carries over
to other domains of life.

I think that any time
we take on something,
if we want to write a book,
or we want to get a degree,
or we want to do
a fitness program,
I think it's worth thinking
about those decisions
as actually to taking
on two major things.

Because one is the planning and
organization around that thing.

And the other is the actual
performance of the thing.

ANDY GALPIN: Wonderful.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: And so, I
say that, because here what
you just described, this 10
steps to consider in designing
a program, I think some people
who are real list makers
and love the precision
and the thoroughness--
and I'm one of these people--
thinking, this is great.

I just want to check off each
one of these things on the list
and figure out the
ideal program for me
for a given period
of time et cetera.

And then other folks might be
thinking, well, that's a lot.

That's just a lot to do.

But what I know
with certainty is
that performing those sorts
of, let's just call them
what they are, those
tasks of figuring out
what's what, where
the defenders are,
et cetera, without question
makes everything go so much
more smoothly once you are
into the actual performance,
the action of doing the
exercise program, or the book,
or the podcast, or whatever
it is that you happen to do.

So I'm grateful that you
brought up both the things that
act as conduits for getting
good work done and this notion
of defenders and bottlenecks.

Because we don't
consider those, I
would argue that it's
a very low probability
that anyone will succeed.

But when one does consider
those, even just a few of them,
I think the probability
of success goes way,
way up immediately.

ANDY GALPIN: That's
actually a very good point.

That is a lot of work
for a lot of people.

And I know when I'm
consuming information,
it is helpful to hear structure,
and systems, and design.

It's also helpful to hear
actual real-life examples.

So maybe the next
thing we can do here
is I can just walk you
through an entire setup
and a program considering folks
that are in bucket A, B, and C.

And maybe I'll save a little
bit of the explanation.

And we'll eliminate
maybe some background.

And I'll just walk you through
what this could look like.

All right.

So I created a program which
should run about a year.

And the idea here is that this
could be an evergreen system.

So one could check off all the
boxes that we've talked about.

So in general we want to
have three primary goals
with exercise.

We want to look a certain way,
whatever that means to you.

We want to be able to perform
a certain way, whether that's
for life goals, like hiking
and energy, or sport goals,
or whatever.

And then we want to be able to
do that across our lifespan.

So a program that gives you
all the goals we talked about,
and a program that covers that
health combine that we referred
to way back in some of
our earlier discussions,
which as a little
bit of a recap is,
what are the physical
fitness parameters that we
know are critical to maintaining
both lifespan and wellness
span?

And as a bit of
a reminder, those
are things like your grip
strength, your leg strength,
your total amount
of muscle mass,
your actual speed and power
so that you can catch yourself
from a fall, your VO2 max,
and your physical fitness.

So I want a program that does
a little bit of all that.

It's similar,
actually, and we're
kind of crossing barriers
between our three buckets.

So I need to be able
to control my fat.

I need to be able to
have enough muscle.

That muscle needs to
have enough function.

And I need to be able to
maintain range of motion
so that I don't lose
flexibility and get hurt.

And then I need to
have a good VO2 max
as well as to be able to
sustain energy over time.

So that was the
goal of my progress.

Now, a couple of other things
that we haven't chatted about,
which are very important.

You have mentioned, I
think, on a previous podcast
about the importance
of seeing light?

Is this something you've
covered at one point or another?

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah.

I joked that I'll be
going into the grave
and they'll be
shoveling dirt onto me
and I'll be telling people
what I'll tell you again now,
which is to get five to 30
minutes of sunlight viewing
as early in the day as
possible, ideally from sunlight.

But that's why it's
called sunlight.

Or from bright lights of
another kind if you cannot get
sunlight.

And also get that
in the evening.

And then avoid bright lights
between the hours of 10:00
PM and 4:00 AM, unless you
do shift work, in which case,
check out our episode
on shift work.

ANDY GALPIN: [LAUGHS] Amazing.

So we've got a little
bit of a juxtaposition
where people are like, I
need to work out and do
all this training.

But then I'm also
supposed to be outside.

How do I blend those two things
into my training program?

Cool.

So I checked that box as well.

I built that in.

The last thing here
is we've talked
about structured exercise.

And just in this episode,
we've really opened up
and do non-structured
exercise-- hiking, sports,
things like that.

Well, one thing that
is incredibly clear--
and my colleague and
friend, Tommy Wood,
at the University of Washington,
published a fantastic paper
very recently on the
importance of proprioception
in maintaining and staving
off late onset dementia
and Parkinson's.

ANDREW HUBERMAN:
Maybe just to remind
people what proprioception is.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah, absolutely.

So there's structured exercise.

And that's very important.

But then there's also things
like balance, and coordination.

And proprioception
meaning you're
adjusting to stimuli coming
in from the outside world.

So this stimuli could be sound.

It could be light.

It could be smell.

Or in the physical
case of the body,
it is where you are at in space.

So I'm feeling like I'm
falling to the left.

Therefore, I need to correct
and move back to the right.

So you don't get this
with doing things
like a hack squat on a machine.

You get this typically
from being outside.

So now you're smelling
and seeing things.

And you're also not
landing with your foot
in the exact same position
on an even platform.

We get this from
things like sport.

Now I'm not only
exercising, but I'm
reacting to the outside world.

The ball is going over here,
my opponent's going over there.

So it's very important,
in my opinion,
to have at least one
session per week of exercise
in which you are doing something
that challenges proprioception.

So how do I fold all
of these best practices
into one training program that's
not 200 hours a week seven days
a week?

That's what I've
laid out to you.

Make sense?

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Makes sense.

ANDY GALPIN: Cool.

Let me walk you through it.

And then, maybe we'll come back
into each individual category
and you can ask
questions about them.

So the way that I think
is best is to have a goal.

And have that goal be around
eight to 10 weeks long,
like we've been talking about.

So what I gave you is, let's
start off with quarter number
one of the year.

So perhaps January
through March or so--
and it doesn't have to be this
long, but just as an example.

You decide your goal is going to
be to put some muscle mass on.

So we're going to
prioritize adding muscle.

Now, within that, you're
going to be bulking up,
adding some muscle, but we're
also going to be sleeping more.

We know we need extra
recovery in this session.

And we need to go
up in calories.

Now, this happens to work
nice for a couple of reasons.

But in that
protocol, maybe we're
going to do seven
days or seven sessions
a week of physical activity.

Doesn't mean seven days.

But maybe those sessions
are something like I
will do one indoor sport.

This could be basketball,
could be any number of things.

So I got my sport ticked
off, and it's indoors.

Why?

I'm in January to March.

The weather's probably not
great for most of the world.

So I'm not going to do
as much outside activity.

I'm going to do weights maybe
three or four times a week,
and then maybe two days a
week I'll go for a long walk.

Again, we'll come back
and I'll explain to you
why I made all these
individual choices
so you're going to run
that for the first quarter.

At the end of this
quarter you're
going to take a de-load week.

Now, this could be fully off.

Maybe this is when you
schedule a vacation.

Maybe this is backing off.

Maybe you just
keep your walks in
and you spend the extra time
on your family, or work,
or whatever else we need to do.

So we've bulked up a little bit.

We spent 12 weeks
adding some mass.

Now we're going to
transition into quarter two,
which is where we start
to actually get lean.

This is actually a pretty
standard bodybuilding template,
which is put on some
mass first, and then you
get lean after that.

So now we're going to get
lean from April to June.

We're going to bring
calories down a little bit.

So now we're actually
going to play
in a hypocaloric
caloric state somewhat.

The days tend to get longer.

So we're going to have more
time to spend in the sun.

So we're going to shift a
little bit from an indoor sport
activity, like the example I
said earlier was basketball,
to maybe stand-up
paddleboarding,
or some other thing
where you're actually
getting your sport
done, you're reacting,
you're using proprioception,
but now you're
getting that sun in there as
well because you have a greater
opportunity to actually do
so, and the weather probably
is going to cooperate with
you more often than it would
in, say, February.

You then maybe going to pick a
fitness or an exercise class.

Any number of routines where
you're with multiple people.

And then, two days a
week in addition to that,
you're going to maybe
lift some weights.

So now, we've added some muscle.

Now we've got lean.

And all of a sudden,
we're actually
looking pretty good
for the summertime.

Hmm.

Interesting.

Quarter three, July to
September, we'll transition,
and we'll try to get into
great cardiovascular shape.

So we'll transition more into
some high intensity interval
type of stuff more frequently.

We're going to maybe stay
at maintenance calories now.

We spend a little bit of time
hyper, then we went hypo,
and now we're going to go back
to maintenance and keep along.

We're going to continue to
choose some outdoor sports,
but maybe you change it up.

Maybe you keep the same one.

Maybe now we switch
it out on the golf,
or now we pick a pickleball,
or we play basketball,
but now we just do it outside.

Any number of things you can do.

So maybe even we do a couple.

Change it up.

You do that twice a week.

You're spending more
time in the sun now.

You're looking
outside and you're
seeing this great weather and
you're not cooped up in a gym
but you're getting your
physical fitness in.

That's also going to be
aiding in your high intensity
or your interval,
your conditioning,
because you're doing
more stuff like that
rather than lifting in a gym.

And then, maybe
you're actually going
to do some track workouts.

Maybe we'll do this on a
bike, or we'll do some hill
sprints outside, any
number of things.

And then we'll do that
maybe twice a week.

And then we'll still
lift weights twice a week
in our gym.

The last quarter then is going
to be October to December.

And we're going to
transition there
into more pure
cardiovascular fitness.

Because we're doing that, we're
going to be working harder.

And remember,
cardiovascular training
is generally expelling much
more calories than lifting.

So we're going to actually
go up in calories.

We're going to return to that.

And that works out kind of well,
because I don't know if or not,
but people tend to eat
a little more calories
from the months of, say,
November through December.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah,
holidays, and at least
in northern hemisphere,
colder temperatures.

ANDY GALPIN: Totally.

Maybe even we play with
two workouts a day here.

We're trying to get
really in shape.

We're trying to improve our
conditioning and our endurance
in multiple areas.

We're going to actually
transition back
into an indoor sport.

So maybe we're going
to do some kickboxing,
or a jiu jitsu class,
or something like that.

We're going to maybe hit the
cardio machine once or twice.

Now we're hopping on a
StairMaster, a VersaClimber,
more maybe get an assault bike
going, something like that.

Maybe hit some machines
and do our lifting there.

Maybe we spent the rest of
the earlier part of the year
on barbells and dumbbells.

We'll transition
to some machines.

And then we'll still try to get
outside and walk twice a week.

And that gets us our
outside activity,
but it's not necessarily
a structured program.

So we've got 15 minutes
where the weather's
breaking a little bit.

So let's walk, get
outside, and get a walk in.

So that's the overall
structure of everything.

I would like to actually
go back to the beginning
now and walk through each
one of these things in detail
and explain why I
chose certain things.

I've kind of given
some hints already.

But I think it'd be helpful
to walk back to the beginning
and start there.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Great.

I of the overall structure.

I have just a
couple of questions.

The idea of training mostly
for hypertrophy January
through March makes sense.

Followed by a period from April
through June focusing primarily
on fat loss.

And then from July to September,
speed and interval type work.

And then October
to December, you
put to emphasize
endurance type training.

I thought for a moment that when
we got to October, December,
you were going to
emphasize strength.

And I'm wondering
whether or not there's
any incentive for training for
strength October, December,
so that when one arrives
at the hypertrophy training
January through March,
we're that much stronger.

The idea being then there's
more muscle to hold on to as one
then tries to lose fat
from April through June.

And then July through
September is the speed work.

Or is July through
September the speed
slash power phase
of the program?

ANDY GALPIN: The July
through September
would be more like
your higher heart rate,
learning to get all the way
up, maximum exertion, and then
recovering.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: An
October to December
is long-form endurance?

ANDY GALPIN: Moderate
to long-form.

So it's closer to that
aerobic capacity stuff.

It is closer to longer
duration and moving
through that spectrum.

You are astute in pointing
out that I didn't have
pure strength really in there.

You certainly could fold it in.

But quite literally, if you
spent three months bulking up
in January to
March, that's going
to bring some strength
along the way.

So you should be fine there.

But you absolutely could
alter any of these variables
if you want to emphasize
something more than other one.

So say you actually felt like
you ran through the fitness
testing.

And you identified, actually,
your endurance is pretty good.

But you're struggling maybe
with a little bit of strength
and maybe a little bit
of lower muscle mass.

You could substitute quarter
three or quarter four
and say, one of those
quarters will be strength.

And then I'll do all
of my conditioning
in another quarter.

And what you've really
done is the programming
is still fairly simple.

You've just altered the
priorities a little bit.

And therefore, you've altered
the adaptation across the year.

And why this is
really important,
this template is meant to be
something you can just run back
year after year after year.

And you make a subtle
change like that.

And now, over the course
of five, 10, 20 years,
you're going to be in a
fantastic spot at the end.

So you can make easy
adjustments along the way
as priorities pop
up, as goals pop up.

But you're going
to be in a position
where everything is--
there's nothing that's
going to be lagging behind.

You'll be in a good spot.

Most of your bases are
covered to be pretty lean,
have a good amount of muscle,
and to be in great shape.

ANDREW HUBERMAN:
Two other questions.

One just a quick question.

For sake of generating
proprioceptive feedback--
during the endurance phase, is
trail-running a good option?

ANDY GALPIN: Absolutely.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Great.

Thinking back to the days
running cross-country.

It's October, December,
you're trail-running.

ANDY GALPIN: Totally.

ANDREW HUBERMAN:
Training for endurance.

ANDY GALPIN: The ground
is not super solid,
which is even
better in this case.

So you're making more
choices and trying
to not fall on your face.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Absolutely.

And then you
mentioned bulking up.

And I just wanted to highlight
that there are some folks,
myself included, while I'd like
to add a little bit of muscle
here or there, I'm not
interested in overeating
to the point where I
lay down a lot of body
fat stores along with that.

ANDY GALPIN: Sure.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: And I think
a lot of people out there
are not necessarily interested
in, quote unquote, bulking up.

I also-- my understanding
of the literature--
and tell me if I'm wrong--
is that while there
does need to be
some sort of caloric
surplus above what
is required to maintain
body weight in order
to build muscle,
that many people who
try and, quote unquote,
bulk up basically just
end up expanding the
size of their cheeks
and face along with
their limbs and torso.
[LAUGHS]
ANDY GALPIN: Yeah.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I'm not
trying to poke fun at them.

But the idea of
deliberately overeating
to the point where a lot of
body fat stores come along,
I would imagine that would just
make the April through June
phase that much harder.

ANDY GALPIN: Correct.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: And
I'm not sure it's ever
been studied directly.

But I can't imagine
it's all that--
excuse me, all that
healthy, to bring along
a lot of adipose tissue in
one's pursuit of hypertrophy.

ANDY GALPIN: You're
absolutely correct.

We have not gotten into the
nutritional details there.

But yeah, thank you.

Good clarification point.

A couple of things.

You're not going to be
doing this very long.

It's 12 weeks.

We're not going to be six,
seven, or eight months.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: You
haven't seen me eat.
[LAUGHTER]
ANDY GALPIN: Number two, just
since we're here to clarify,
the literature is
ongoing in this area.

And there's actually
a handful of studies
that I know are coming soon.

But in general, when I
say hypercaloric here,
I'm referring to an increasing
caloric intake above baseline
by something like 10% to 15%.

So if you normally eat 2,500
calories throughout the day,
you might add
another 250 to 400.

I'm not doubling calories.

I don't want you to
be stuffing your face,
hating food, feeling
awful all day,
and then putting on half
of your weight as fat
and half your weight as muscle.

It is just technically
hypercaloric
because you're
eating more, which
is an absolute requirement
for most people to add muscle.

Some folks who have a high
percentage of body fat
and a low level of
fitness training
can actually get
away with just being
either isocaloric, technically,
or even a little bit lower,
and still adding some muscle
while losing some fat.

But for most folks, that's
going to be challenging.

So you're going to want to
be in a hypercaloric state.

Another reason I put it in
here is because, remember,
people tend to make
these extra calorie
choices during this part
of the year anyways.

And so, you're playing into
life is why I chose that.

It's like, hey, you can't
restrict calories all the time.

It's really, really hard.

So maybe if we can put
it calorie restriction
during the phases of the year
that's a little bit easier,
and give you the freedom
to have a little bit
more calories during
the phase of the year
when you're probably going
to want to do that anyways.

Just make sure you're doing
a style of training that
supports that.

So you're going to be
trying to add muscle
when you know you're going
to be adding more calories.

We're going to be
trying to really push
the pace on our
conditioning when
we know we're going to be
eating more calories anyways.

And so, that is
actually, in fact,
exactly why I chose those goals
for those times of the year.

It's because we're now playing
into life a little bit more.

But we, again, certainly do not
want to be eating to an excess
or where it's causing some of
the problems you mentioned.

We just need to be
eating a little bit more.

The last point here is, the
next phase, April to June,
we know we're going hypocaloric.

So it's always kind
of nice to go, yeah,
we're going to go in a little
bit of a calorie deficit here.

But it's really just
these few months.

And it's OK, because I spent
the last six months where
I wasn't restricting that much,
and then one actually where
I got to eat a little bit more.

And now, cool, not hard
for me to convince somebody
that to go we're going to
bring the calories down right
now, or in a month,
in two months.

And it's just going to be
this 12 or 16-week phase,
or whatever you end
up being in there.

So those were some
of the rationale
that I was thinking of
when I decided to do that.

But thank you.

That's a very important point
in terms of the hypocaloric.

It's not the dirty bulk.

It's not the excess that
a lot of folks will do.

ANDREW HUBERMAN:
And just a final
point for folks in the
Southern hemisphere, Australia,
and South Americans.

ANDY GALPIN: Ah,
flip everything.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: We actually
have a large listenership
in the Southern hemisphere.

Of course, adjust accordingly.

Even though the holiday
months are still
in November, December,
there are, of course,
holidays all year long.

ANDY GALPIN: Of course.

You got Fourth of July.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Many,
many of the major holidays
are around November, December.

But it's summer down there.

Just adjust accordingly.

There's nothing
holy about trying
to achieve certain adaptations
at certain times of year.

It's more about trying
to eliminate bottlenecks,
defenders, as you mentioned.

And it's really
about the sequence.

ANDY GALPIN: So if we go
back to that first quarter,
we're going to try to add
some mass, for the reasons
I just described.

It's also tends to
be pretty motivating.

You're going to
start the year off.

You're going to want to train
and get all excited because
of your New Year's resolution.

And you're going to see
results immediately.

We've talked about this in
some of the previous episodes.

The nice part about
hypertrophy training
is you see your muscles
growing right now.

Where the endurance stuff
tends to have a little bit more
of a delayed gratification.

So I'm going to give
you a win early.

Now, we're also going
to be sleeping more.

Because we know--
and maybe we'll
get into this in
a future episode--
that sleep is absolutely
critical to recovery
and critical to
growing muscle mass.

So you're going
to emphasize sleep
more during this
part of the year
also because the
sun is very low.

It's harder to sleep
for a lot of folks
longer when the sun
is out for longer,
especially if you don't have
a perfect blackout curtain.

And so, you're
just trying to play
with the restrictions life gives
you and optimize your scenario.

So the sun's probably
not out very often.

And especially,
depending on where
you live, if you're anywhere
like where I grew up
in the Pacific
Northwest, [LAUGHS]
it's going to be dark, and gray,
and gloomy most of the day.

So it's not hard to convince you
to go sleep a little bit more
often.

So we'll do that.

That's also, again, why
I chose an indoor sport.

That activity, you're going to
not shoot yourself in the foot.

Being in the gym when
it's cold and crappy
outside is not that hard
to convince yourself to do.

So you're going to be lifting
your weights, say, four times
a week.

And then, again, getting
some outside time
in the form of a walk
so that you can do it
in the middle of
work if you have to,
or catching 20 minutes here or
there, whatever it needs to be.

The chances of you missing
that walk are little.

And you'll still get
some outside time.

You've talked about the
importance of getting sunlight
in even if it is overcast.

So you can still
nail all those boxes
and be in a pretty good spot
at the end of that quarter.

So moving on to quarter
two then, April to June.

A lot of people want to look
good during the summer months.

You're more likely
to be outside.

You're more likely to have your
shirt off because it's hot,
because you're
either on vacation,
or going to the beach.

So let's play into
that a little bit.

Let's let people look
a little bit better,
if that's what they determine
to be looking better,
during the months when they're
more likely to have that.

You're also more likely to
have things like weddings
over the summertime.

People don't get married
often in the winter.

And so, people want to
look good for these events.

So let's play into what a
lot of people already want.

And let's help you get leaner.

Not a lot of
holidays that involve
eating during that phase.

And so, you're not going to
feel like you're missing out
on a ton of life outside of
maybe a few smaller holidays
in that phase.

The days are getting longer.

And so, we're going to choose
to get in the sun more often.

We can start getting
a tan better.

We can start getting
ready for summer.

And so, that's is why we
exchanged our indoor sport
for an outdoor sport--
surfing, hiking,
cycling outside,
whatever the thing
is you want to do.

There's tons of them.

Kiteboarding, like I said,
skateboarding-- there you go.

Get out and start skating
a little bit, whatever
it needs to be.

So we'll do that
once a week or so.

And then I actually threw
in a fitness class here.

And there's a couple of reasons.

One, now it's sort of nice to
take the pressure programming
off.

It's also nice
to, if you've been
lifting by yourself,
to get in there
and lift with somebody else.

It's also nice to now have
some social interaction.

The gamification, the
group, the scoring stuff
that happens in fitness
classes is very, very powerful.

It tends to be
somewhat fleeting.

So it won't last
for a long time,
for some people, others it does.

And so, if you
pepper this thing in
and you know you're going
to join this activity class,
even if it's not great and the
program design isn't perfect,
it's fine for 10 weeks.

In fact, you may
really, really enjoy it.

And also, again, it gives you
something new to think about.

Music is on.

You're out of your house if
you're lifting at your house.

You're in a different
part of the gym.

The schedule is
a little tighter.

So you can't just go work
out whenever you want.

You've got to show up
when the class is going.

And you'll probably find
that you just love it.

You also get some
social interaction,
which is something that's also
very important that we haven't
really discussed yet, if
you're out playing basketball
by yourself or whatnot.

So this is just
another thing I'm
trying to fold in that still
allows you to check off
multiple boxes of things
that are healthy for you.

You've had episodes on the
importance of social connection
interaction.

We talked about that
in the quad breakdown
of making sure you
have relationship time
and things like that.

So throwing in a fitness
class and just doing,
honestly, something quite
different is pretty fun.

But then, still,
keeping two days a week
where you're doing a
traditional strength training
thing so you have some
quality control there.

Lastly, you can also
then make sure you're
hitting any specific movements
or muscle groups that
are very important to you.

So you don't get to control
that in your fitness class.

But now you can at
least do the gym
and make sure you hit
that muscle group that you
have an interest in it.

So now we're
feeling pretty good.

We're rolling into the summer.

We're pretty lean.

We're getting out
in the sun a lot.

We're bringing calories
down a little bit.

And we probably are
feeling pretty happy.

We're also not burnt out.

We've done a lot of fun things.

And we've checked
a lot of the boxes
off for long-term development.

We had a combination
of specificity
with exercise selection.

But we also folded in just
a little bit of variation
so we don't have to worry
about overuse injury of doing
the same machines, the same
lift, months, and months,
and months, after months, and
slowly wearing down something
if our technique isn't perfect.

So now we're going to
go into our quarter
three, which is the summer
months, basically, up here
at least, July to September.

We'll transition.

It's been a while since
we've done some conditioning.

So we may have lost a little
cardiorespiratory fitness.

We may have-- not
feeling great anymore,
maybe energy throughout the day
stuff is starting to leak down.

So we're going to get in shape.

We're going to push
our heart rate high.

And we're going to bring
the calories back up.

The summertime, 4th of July,
other holidays like this where
eating is involved,
maybe you're going
to sporting events
and things like that.

Our sport choices is often
going to be outdoors.

But in fact, what you'll
notice here is, is I've
ramped the sport choice
up to twice a week.

And in fact, I
would encourage you
to do two different
types of exercise.

And one of the primary
reasons for that
is to spend more time outside.

A challenge we often
see with people with
exercises going, man,
it's so nice outside.

I can't go sit in the
gym for 45 minutes.

I don't have that
much free time.

And then, Huberman's
over here telling me
I need to get direct
sunlight more.

How am I going to fit this in?

Well, do your exercise outside.

Enjoy it.

Now, if you live
down here like us,
you take sunshine for granted.

But a lot of people I
know it's like, it's
only nice for two and
1/2 months of the year.

Get outside.

So let's push more of
our fitness training
to outdoor activities.

These sports can
be intense or not.

It could be go out
there and swim hard.

Get in the ocean.

You're going to do open ocean
swimming instead of swimming
in the pool indoors, or
whatever the case may be.

So we're going to give ourselves
more of a priority of being
outside, looking--
we've looked pretty good.

We're a little tan.

And we're enjoying all the
benefits of training outside
and the lack of structure.

Still, we have structured,
but not so specific
like the machines and
the weights give us.

Maybe even now we're
doing some track workouts.

So now we can do something
like sprint the straightaways,
walk the corners.

And we don't have to,
again, do our conditioning
on the same StairMaster, or
machine, or whatever we're on.

So we're going to enjoy
some stuff like that.

We're going to be athletic.

We're going to run.

We're going to move.

We haven't talked
about that yet.

Everything has really been
about structured exercise.

Well, now we're going
to do some sprint work.

We're going to get out
and see that, which
is a really important human
quality that, I think,
is important to not lose, is
actually ability to sprint.

So we'll do that.

And then we'll still make
sure we lift twice a week
for the same reasons I talked
about in the previous phase.

So we make sure we have
some quality control there.

We maintain some of the muscle
that we built in the quarter
before.

We don't lose too much strength.

There is very good literature
to suggest strength maintenance
can be done in as little
as five sets per week
for a very long time, really
up to eight-plus weeks
if you do a little bit.

So you're touching it enough
where you're not going
to get really, really weak.

But what you wouldn't want
to do is go 12 or 16 weeks
where you lifted no weights.

And maybe you got
in great shape,
but you're going to feel
very weak after that.

So maybe that number could
come down to one time a week
if you really wanted it to.

But one to two days
a week where you're
lifting the big exercises,
the muscle groups
and movements of interest,
and you're good to go.

Then, lastly, we roll
into our final quarter,
which is October to December.

And we're going to really
get in great shape.

The sun is starting
to come down.

We're rolling into the holidays.

Weather's getting worse.

We may have other
outdoor activities
we want to do, like, in my case,
you're going on a hunting trip,
you have some
travel, conferences,
whatever the case may be.

And so, we're going to
choose an indoor sport.

And I love combat sports.

So the example I gave
earlier was jujitsu.

Or maybe you just
transition your basketball
to inside, or your
pickleball comes inside,
or whatever it happens to be.

And you're still going to
have that twice a week.

And then, maybe instead of
the track workout outside,
you do that same
workout indoors,
now back on some sort of
machine or something like that.

Our weights are actually
now down to once a week
because we're really pushing
the pace on cardiovascular.

We're doing once a week to
maintain it, to not lose,
and get too far behind.

But we really want to
bring up our VO2 max.

We want to bring up our
efficiency, our cardiac output,
and everything like that.

And we're still going to
now walk twice a week so
that we get something outside.

And I talked about
why, again, it's
nice to have that flexibility
of not having to train outside,
because now you got to warm
up and do all those things.

We just get out
and get a walk in.

You still get the
outdoor experience.

So we run through
that entire thing.

And then you just start
back the next year.

Ideally, again, at the
end of every quarter,
you take a week off.

Whether that is a
true full week off,
which I'm fully supportive.

I mean, friends, we're
only talking about four
off weeks a year.

That's absolutely fine.

Or it could even be
a slight de-load week
if you want it to be.

So we shouldn't run into
too many issues of overuse.

We have a lot of variety.

We get a lot of
movement patterns
in because we're mixing in sport
with machines and dumbbells.

We're mixing in
social interaction.

We're mixing in the sun.

We're mixing in enjoyment.

We're mixing in fat loss,
strength, hypertrophy,
some cardiovascular endurance.

We're mixing in
calories in high,
we're mixing a little
bit of calories low.

And we're trying to hit as many
of these nodes as possible.

If you also wanted to cut each
one of these a little bit short
and repeat your fitness testing
at the end of every quarter,
you could.

I would probably recommend
doing it at least once a year.

Perhaps doing it maybe the
third week of December or so.

So you run that testing.

That's your last
week of training.

Then you get to go on
your vacation break.

You come back at the
beginning of the year.

You've got new goals,
new targets and you go.

If you want to repeat it twice a
year, do the same sort of thing
at the end of June.

It's fine.

I know I laid these out as
quarters, which is generally 12
weeks, with one back-off week.

But if you wanted to make it
nine weeks and a testing week,
and then a back-off,
or 10 weeks, it's fine.

It's close enough.

So the last little
thing I want to say
is, let's assume you're
doing the 12 weeks.

And you're going to
have a back-off week
at the end of the 12 weeks.

I would actually still then
recommend having at least one
back-off week halfway through.

So it would look like this.

Five weeks hard where
you're progressing.

You're going up, up, up, up, up.

Every week you're either
increasing volume intensity
like we talked about
a few minutes ago.

Then week six, de-load.

Go down to 70% volume intensity.

Come back.

Go hard for five more weeks.

And now, week 12 is your true
off week where you, again,
take the whole thing off.

If you do that, you now
have four weeks a year
where you're totally off.

You have four weeks a year where
you're really backing down.

And you just have
five-week segments
all year round where
you're just going
to push it hard for five weeks.

You're going to get a break.

You're going to
reset, and you're
going to transition
a little bit.

Now, as I started this
conversation off with,
there are many ways you could
structure your training program
throughout the year and hit
those primary goals we talked
about of looking fantastic,
feeling amazing, and being
able to do that
your entire life.

All I can tell you, though,
is I know this model works.

Because we've done this
a lot with our clients
in our rapid health
optimization program.

And this spans everything
from 25-year-old folks
who are competing in
the Boston Marathon
to a lot of individuals who
have never exercised before,
who maybe have done a
little bit of exercise.

In fact, it's quite literally
all three of the buckets
you laid out.

We've had clients in
all of those areas,
both men and women,
young and old.

And we've had a tremendous
amount of success transforming
their lives using a very similar
model to what I just laid out.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I find
that overall structure
to be immensely informative.

And I'll tell you why in the
context of a number of examples
with myself, although that's
the least important of them,
frankly, but examples of family
members of mine and friends
of mine who've
undertaken consistent
exercise training
programs but that haven't
varied the program so much.

And here, again, I
think of the person
who really loves to swim.

They have a low barrier of entry
to the pool or to the ocean.

They love being in the water.

I am not one such person.

I like being in the
water, but I don't
motivate to drive to the
pool or to bike to the pool
or to get into the
ocean that often.

Once I do it, I enjoy it.

But for me it's running
and lifting weights.

And it has been for
a very long time.

I have a family member,
close family member,
who doesn't really like,
quote unquote, exercise,
but loves dance and dancing.

Going out dancing, yes, but
dance classes in particular.

ANDY GALPIN: Amazing.

ANDREW HUBERMAN:
Really enjoys it.

Loves to be distracted from the
fact that she's doing exercise
and just really enjoys it.

And actually is a
very good dancer
despite the fact that
she's related to me.

And on and on.

There are many
examples, I think,
of folks that fall into the
different bins that we talked
about earlier but that also
tend to default towards a given
structure of training
one way and doing that
throughout the year.

I can tell you right
now that I'm personally
going to modify my
schedule according
to this four quarters per year.

It actually works
because I've mostly
been on the quarter system in
academics for a very long time.

I was at a university that
had a semester system once.

But this quarter system
is actually the one
that we follow academically.

So that's one reason why
it's a natural fit for me.

I confess that I
typically don't vary up
the proportions of endurance
to resistance training.

I tend to keep those about
three and three across the week.

Three resistance
training sessions, three,
let's call them cardio sessions.

But each one designed to
achieve a different adaptation.

And I've now altered
those even further
based on your recommendations
in this episode
and previous episodes.

But what I have not done is
to really think about de-load
and to really stick
to the structure
that I set out to
accomplish across the year.

On the topic of de-load,
for me, the de-load
has been when I get overwhelmed
with work, or I've gotten sick.

I don't tend to get
sick that often.

But every once in a
while I get knocked back
with a cold or a flu.

Once every three or
four years I seem
to really get hammered with
a fever-inducing something
or other.

And then I'm bedridden
for a couple of days.

And then I'm back at it.

And I tend to come
back rather slowly.

And that tends to
be my week off.

But I'm beginning to
wonder whether or not
part of the reason I hit those
streaks of being overwhelmed
by sickness or by stress
is that I have not
done a de-load period.

So one of the things that I'm
going to immediately implement
is a periodic de-load
according to the program
that you described.

And I'm also going to start
matching my specific goals
for each quarter
with time of year.

I don't think I've done that.

And it's not because
I live in California.

And by the way, folks, there
are temperature variations
and amount of light across the
day variations in California
as well, although they
are not as dramatic
as they would be near the
North Pole, for instance.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah.

They're pretty moderate.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Right.

But of course, some of the
listeners are at the equator.

So they have the opposite issue.

In any event, I'm
definitely going to do that.

I'm going to start incorporating
regular de-load periods.

And I am going to be
very dedicated, very
disciplined about sticking
to a program for three
months devoted mainly
to hypertrophy,
then a three-month program
devoted to fat loss,
then a program devoted
to aerobic output,
and then one devoted
to endurance.

Although I must say,
it's very tempting for me
to do a very specific
strength-dedicated portion.

ANDY GALPIN: Sure.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Because I don't
tend to be particularly strong.

I'm not weak, but I'm
not particularly strong.

So I might consult with
you as to how I could
vary endurance and strength.

In any event, I love the
idea of a macro-structure.

And I love the idea of
de-loads in anticipation
of being able to go further
in the long-run in terms
of results.

I'm hoping this next
year, because we're just
on the cusp of a new year, will
be the first year in which I
don't find myself getting
some bug, or virus,
or whatever it happens
to be from time to time
and having to back off on
training for that reason.

And that prompts a question.

And it's something
that I want to get
into in more detail with you
when you describe recovery--
an upcoming episode.

But a couple of quick questions.

Maybe there are some
short or short-ish answers
you could provide.

If I'm not feeling
well, like I really
had a poor night's sleep.

Maybe just two to four hours
of sleep for whatever reason.

Train or don't train?

That's the first question.

Second question
is, if I'm starting
to feel a little bit
of a throat tickle,
and I'm in that phase of
denial, like I don't get sick,
I'm not getting sick.

And would I be better off
bundling up some hot liquids,
getting into bed, sleeping
in a little bit more,
et cetera, and protecting
myself against that,
or would I be
better off training?

And if I've-- and then
the third question is--
if I've already succumbed to a
bug, but it's not a severe bug.

I don't have elevated
body temperature.

So no fever.

I'm not hacking up,
not productive cough
or anything like that.

But I'm feeling just
kind of not well,
head cold-ish sort of
thing comes to mind,
and it's not seasonal
allergies, train or don't train,
leaving aside the
point of whether or not
I'm in a position to
get anyone else sick.

Because obviously
that's a bad idea.

ANDY GALPIN: Of course.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: So lack of
sleep, I would say, 30% to 40%
of one's typical sleep
the previous night,
train or no train?

Starting to feel like
one might be getting ill.

And then the third category is
coming back from being sick.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Thanks.

And sorry for the
extended question,
but I want to make sure there
was enough detail there,
because I think these are
three common scenarios.

ANDY GALPIN: We
are going to cover
that in the recovery
conversation
that's next in detail.

And I will give you very
specific guidelines.

And we'll have plenty
of time to go into that.

The quick answer
is, it comes back
to what phase of
training you're in.

Now, to walk through
each scenario.

If it is a crummy
night of sleep,
and I am in a phase of
training in which we are trying
to cause adaptation, I have a
lot of space in my schedule,
and I'm really using this
time to make progress
because I know coming up
soon my schedule will change
and my time to
train will go down.

I'm still training.

I might use a bunch
of tricks that we
have for feeling
better instantaneously.

We call these little hacks.

These are acute hacks.

These are not chronic hacks.

I'm going to push the pace.

If it is really close
to a de-load week.

Say it's Wednesday and I
start my de-load next week.

Or this is not one
bad night of sleep,
this has been four bad nights
of sleep in the last five days.

This has been six
kind of crummy nights
over the course
of the last nine,
and you're starting to
see a larger pattern,
then that's a different answer.

So the question we're
going to ask ourselves
is, is this acute?

Or is this a tendency, or
actually a chronic thing?

If it's acute, and
we're close, we're
going to train through it.

If it's acute and this is
not a phase of training
when we're trying to
really push, then maybe we
back off a little bit.

If it's the opposite
though, we need
to probably make some
changes and give ourselves
some recovery.

This may include anything from
a moderate training session,
maybe I'm going to go in the
sauna and sit through that,
and then do some breathing
drills and some mobility stuff.

Great.

Maybe I'm going to go to the gym
and ride the bike at 50% heart
rate.

Something restorative like that.

Gives you a little bit of energy
but doesn't beat you down.

That's probably
where we're learning.

If you're feeling sick
and you think it's coming,
I'm probably going
to do option two
as well, which is some sort
of restorative training.

So again, this tends
to be moderate.

Could be weights.

Could be any of the stuff.

Maybe you're going to go out
for your swim or whatever.

But we're not going to push
past probably about 70%.

We can absolutely
induce immunosuppression
with excessive training.

And so, you may want
to walk out of that.

The last case, which was, I
think, phase number three,
you said there, which is, I got
a pretty gnarly cold right now.

Am I going to train?

Most of the time for most
people, I'm just going to say,
just shut it down.

Get out of there.

If you're not going to be able
to get productivity done there,
you may be better off either
going and sleeping, catching up
on work doing other stuff.

So that the next time you go
to train you don't feel behind
and we can give a good
solid effort for it.

I
Know other people who will
train right through it.

I tend to not, to
be totally frank.

If I'm feeling kind of junky,
I'm really not going to train.

I may actually probably do
some hot water immersion.

So bath, Jacuzzi,
things like that.

I actually like those
better than I like sauna.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: If one is ill?

Or you just like them better
than the sauna generally?

ANDY GALPIN: Oh, both, actually.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Oh my.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: First
person I've ever met or come
on this podcast to say
you like baths and Jacuzzi
more than sauna.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah, absolutely.

I may even do some ice.

Probably not a ton though.

Because you've got
to be careful there.

That's a big stressor.

And if you're already
over the line,
you may be adding a pass there.

Or I may go sleep.

If I'm feeling very,
very, very sleepy,
and sometimes depending on
what kind of a bug you get,
that can happen.

I will just sleep.

And that might be the
best choice you have.

If that means you kick the
cold half a day earlier,
then you just won
in the aggregate.

So those are probably--
it's a little bit of
insight of the algorithm
that I'm running
with those things.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Those are
highly informative answers.

Thank you.

And I look forward to our
discussion about recovery
so that we can go into even
more depth on how to recover.

ANDY GALPIN: The last
thing I do want to say
here is going back to
our quarter system.

The examples I gave
with the bulking up,
losing fat, and then
getting into better fitness
and cardiovascular
fitness at the end,
those were just samples.

Friends, please don't
take that literally.

If you want to
emphasize strength more,
put in some more strength.

If you want to emphasize a
different one of our nine
adaptations, great.

Do that too.

If you're somebody who has
a lot of body fat to lose,
then maybe put that for
two consecutive sessions,
or every other.

You can modify them.

We've talked about nine very
specific training adaptations
as well as in fat loss.

I only gave you
four, which is just
meant to be a sample that
you can roll in or out.

But use those priorities to
adjust that system according
to what is important
for you now, five years,
and then 45 years down the
line for whatever that may be.

So you are absolutely
free to modify the order.

You're absolutely free to
modify the primary outcome.

And then, adjust the
specifics within each quarter
based upon what is needed to
do to optimize that outcome.

I think maybe one
more tool we can
offer people is maybe giving
the individual week a little bit
more structure.

So the system I laid
out is month by month.

And maybe we can lay out,
say, a three-day a week
workout program and a
four-day a week program.

That would still hit some of the
same well-rounded adaptations.

That probably covers maybe
not individualized per bucket
that we've talked about.

A, B, and C, but
it's going to cover
75%, 80% of what we'll need
to occur in all three buckets.

And then, you can use that last
25% for your individual goal
or specialization.

So maybe we can
jump into that next.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Great.

Let's hear it.

ANDY GALPIN: The
first one I want
to give you is just a
basic three-day split.

That, again, same idea.

It's a well-rounded
exercise program.

I actually wrote this
all in an article
that is on XPT's website.

So perhaps we can
link directly to that.

I will just jump you
straight to the answer.

You can read more about why
and details in that article
if you'd like.

But this is day one,
day two, day three.

You could do these days
where you split them up,
actually having, say,
24 hours in between,
or you could do
these back to back.

It doesn't necessarily matter.

In this particular
case, say, day one
you would start off and do a
little bit of speed and power.

And then you may finish
that with a little bit
of hypertrophy.

Now, if you want to gain
more speed and power
you just do more of it.

If you want to maybe just
do a little bit to touch it,
and you really want
to gain some muscle,
you would do more of
an emphasis there.

So the template
can stay the same,
and you would just increase the
amount of either adaptation,
the speed and power
stuff, or the hypertrophy,
based on how high it is
in your priority list.

Those are combined together
because, as we talked
about earlier, they
don't necessarily
interfere with each other.

You would do the speed
and power stuff first
because it wouldn't
hamper the hypertrophy.

If you did the hypertrophy
first in that workout,
it would probably compromise
your speed and power.

And in that case, you
would actually not
be getting your adaptation.

So day one you do that.

And that could be a 20-minute
workout total, or a two and 1/2
hour, up to you.

Then you would come back maybe
the next day or two days later,
whatever you'd like to do.

In your second day
of exercise, you
would start off with a
pure strength protocol.

And you would finish that
with what I'm calling just
a higher heart rate.

So this could be something like
our anaerobic capacity stuff.

It could be the
aerobic capacity,
something where you're getting
up to close to high heart rate.

It could be those
20-second bursts.

It could be a 90-second burst,
five-minute mile repeats,
anything you like.

You can just plug
and play this in.

You're getting to
a spot now where
you've had a little
bit of speed,
a little bit of strength, a
little bit of hypertrophy,
and you've touched
the high heart rate.

So we've checked off most of the
boxes already in two sessions.

Our last session then would
be more of a steady state
long duration endurance.

And so, a three-day
week split like that
is going to be a pretty nice
setup for the average person.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: So
this could be a Monday,
Wednesday, Friday, Tuesday,
Thursday, Saturday.

What's happening on
the intervening days?

ANDY GALPIN: Totally off
if you want it to be.

So I set this up as the
best I can give you,
Andy, is three days.

Great.

If you have more, we could
certainly improve it.

But this was my
worst case scenario.

I've got other
things in my life.

The most I could do for
exercise is three days a week.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: And
given that it's three days
per week, how long--
approximately how long each of
these workouts going to last?

ANDY GALPIN: I would do a whole
body exercises for almost all
that.

I would do your full body parts.

And I think you could
certainly finish that
in 45 minutes of work time.

A little bit of time to warm
up, some down-regulation
at the end.

You could be in and out
of that gym in certainly
under 60 minutes.

The reality of it is you
could probably be out of there
in under 50 minutes.

The total work time could be
30, 35 once you get going.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: So
that's three days.

As you pointed out,
probably more work per week
is going to be better
in terms of maximizing
goals of aesthetic goals, and
performance-enhancing goals,
and longevity goals.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I mean,
the numbers that I've heard
is that we should all try
to get somewhere between 150
and probably more like 180
to 200 minutes of zone two
cardio per week minimum.

But as I recall, you
consider zone two cardio
so low intensity
that just walking
around qualifies as really
zone one, zone two cardio.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah.

Not to take us
too far off track.

But I think it's actually
useful to differentiate
what I consider to be exercise
and physical activity.

So physical activity
is out for a walk.

It is using a walking
treadmill while you're at work.

It is parking farther
in the parking lot
and taking more steps.

These are all important.

And what's clear, you are
not going to reach, likely,
optimal health by only
exercising hard and then
sitting around the other 23
and 1/2 hours of the day.

So it's very, very important.

Whether you want to do that in
the form of zone one or zone
two and hit 30 minutes a day.

Various organizations
will say things like that.

You need to have
30 minutes a day
of moderate to
low-intensity exercise.

I don't really care.

You can combine it
like that if you want.

What you don't want to do is
just physical activity only,
which is almost always
going to be like zone one
to maybe zone two.

You also don't want
to go the other end
of the spectrum, which is,
again, I lift hard three days
a week.

And then what to do you
do the rest of the time?

Nothing.

That's not optimal either.

And so, I guess the system
I walked you through here--
or the example, rather,
I walked you through is--
you would need to
maybe supplant that
with being physically active.

If you work, say you're a
nurse, and you're on your feet.

You're moving up and down.

You're probably
actually covering
a decent amount of
your physical activity
because you might be
at 15,000 steps a day.

If you're sitting in
front of your computer
and you do this same
three-day split,
you would probably
need to go out
of your way to make sure you're
adding a bunch more steps.

And so, you might need
to add several hours
of walking to hit that
150, 180 minutes a week
of physical activity.

Because the program I laid out
is, if you're doing, really,
45 minutes three-days a
week, maybe 60 minutes,
at best you've hit 180.
60 minutes times
three, 180 a week.

So you might actually need
to then throw in maybe
some more specific walks.

So you could do that
in a number of ways.

It could be, again, actual
structured exercise.

It could be simply I'm going to
do a 10-minute walk three times
a day.

It could be the exercise
snacks that we talked about
in a previous episode.

So there's lots
of ways to engage
in more physical activity.

But to me, those are
different, oftentimes,
than structured exercise.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: I think many
people will appreciate that you
put out there for us a
three-day-a-week protocol,
because many people simply don't
have more time to exercise.

They're putting emphasis
on these other bins
in the quadrant.

And frankly, those other bins
are very important as well.

So wonderful that
people can check off
some critical boxes
for aesthetics,
and performance, and longevity
with three days of work
or workouts, per
week, I should say.

What are some other
schedules that people
can follow if they're willing
to dedicate a bit more time
toward their fitness?

ANDY GALPIN: Sure.

If you wanted to do
another sample of maybe
a four-day week.

And again, to clarify this,
I'm really happy you said that.

This is a four-day a week
of structured exercise.

This would not account
your physical activity
and moving around.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Which
everybody should be doing.

ANDY GALPIN: Absolutely.

Maybe this is
something like day one
you're going to do a
strength-training session,
and you'll stay in the five
to 10 or so repetition range.

A little bit of strength, a
little bit of hypertrophy,
you've checked off
a couple of boxes.

Probably whole body, so
that you get all the body
parts covered or close.

We're looking at generally
multi-joint exercises.

Could be combination
of barbells,
free-weights, bands,
machines, anything like that
would be day one.

You could come back
the very next day,
or you could wait 24 hours.

But the second day
of your exercise
would be maybe
your long duration.

And this is actually sort of
similar to how you set it up.

It's you do a little
bit of the inverse.

But what you're
kind of saying is,
I'm probably going to be a
little bit sore from day one.

And I don't have any free
body parts that aren't sore.

So instead of trying to do
another lift or something,
I'm just going to put in some
restorative longer duration
stuff-- same exact
principles for long duration
we just talked about.

It could be a swim.

It could be any
number of things.

Could be your sport.

It could be you're
out, ride the bike
and go for a jog in the sun,
whatever you would like to do.

If you're feeling better, maybe
that's a little harder longer.

If you're feeling pretty
beat up from the day before,
maybe that's a little
bit shorter and slower.

You can modify it.

Then maybe you take
the next day off.

Or that's open.

Your third day of
exercise is now,
instead of being that five to 10
repetition range for your lift,
you do something like
11 to 30 reps range.

Also, this could be
exchanged for something
more like body weight,
more muscular endurance
type of stuff.

So this is a great
day, maybe it's yoga.

Maybe it is a gymnastics
thing you're working on,
or any of the many
other styles of training
that are not quote
unquote lifting weights.

But they're not just
walking and hiking.

So it could be a Pilates,
or equivalent, anything
like this where
you're going to get
some muscular burn in there.

But it's probably not
any additional weight
outside of body
weight, or if it is,
it's fairly minimal, five, 10,
15 pounds, something like that
would be nice.

Could also be done in a circuit.

So we could hit
our high heart rate
and we could hit some
muscular endurance in there.

Group activity class
might be nice here.

Even maybe something like a
spin class or a dance class.

All these things could be great.

And then, maybe you even
finish that with 10 minutes
of some light weights to hit the
body part you say didn't get.

So maybe you did
the dance class.

And then you finish and you do
10 minutes of upper body sets
of 30 to make sure you
get a nice pump there,
because your legs probably
got some work during the dance
class, but your
upper body didn't.

And so you balance the
system out a little bit.

So all body parts got a little
bit of muscular endurance.

Your heart rate got really
high, came back down,
and you checked
both of those boxes.

Now, it's important to remember
the hypertrophy episode.

Doing sets of, say,
15-plus repetitions per set
is as effective as doing
sets of five to 10 or 12
for hypertrophy--
gaining muscle.

It's not effective though
for strength gains.

So you wouldn't want
to do this only,
because you'd really be doing
nothing to improve your muscle
strength.

And you want to make
sure that that box is
ticked at least a little bit.

Then, again, you could take
the day off after this.

Or you could roll right
into your fourth exercise
day, which would be your last
exercise session of the week.

And you would do something
more of a medium intensity.

So this is a little bit higher
intensity than our second day.

And this could be something
like shadowboxing,
or hitting a heavy bag.

It could be a little bit of
higher intensity intervals,
but not all the way up.

So maybe this is you're
going to do a one minute on,
one minute off on the bike.

But you're only going to
go to 85%, 90% heart rate.

And then, instead of going
off during that one minute,
you drop it down to 50%.

So we would actually look like
30 minutes of straight work,
but you would have a little
bit of rolling intensity
as opposed to staying
really nice and restorative.

It's going to be
some work there.

And you would finish it
with something like five
to six minutes total of
max heart rate stuff.

Which lines up perfectly
with that number you actually
[LAUGHS] created on
our endurance episode
of hitting six minutes total
per week of maximum heart rate
or close.

So you could wrap that
all up into one session.

You could do those
in the inverse order,
thorough warm-up, a few
minutes, whether you
want to do 30-second
bursts or a minute burst,
or straight five minutes.

This is a protocol I like to
use a ton on the assault bike.

It is simply a good warm-up,
10 minutes solid warm-up.

Recover, and then I'm
going to go five minutes
and cover as much distance
as I can in five minutes.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Brutal.

ANDY GALPIN: It is brutal.

And it's amazing.

And you get a lot
done in five minutes.
10 minutes on the back
of that is a very gradual
bring back to Earth there.

I actually, in
that case, I don't
need to do
down-regulation breathing,
because I've spent 10 minutes
actually coming way back down.

And the last two minutes or
so of that is very deliberate,
five-second inhale through
the nose, five-second exhale
through the nose while
I'm barely just moving.

And you end up being
in a pretty good spot.

So that, again, time-wise could
easily be done in 30 minutes.

And you'd be rounded off there.

So the nice part about
this four day a week split
as well as a three
day a week split is it
does give you a little
bit of flexibility.

And so, what I mean
is, maybe Monday
your plan is to do
the day one lift.

And then, any number of
things popped up in life.

Just shift it back to Tuesday.

Rather than saying Monday is leg
day and then all of a sudden,
something happened,
you miss leg day.

It's just you're doing
these things in order.

And you would like to get all
four done in a seven-day span.

But if it doesn't happen, fine.

The next day you
get to work out,
you just go right back
into the next workout.

And it doesn't matter what
day they land on exactly.

For the three-day routine,
that works very nice,
because the assumption
there is you
really only have time for
three workouts a week.

And so, that's
sort of implicit is
there's probably
some chaos happening
in the schedule a little bit.

And you don't really
have the ability
to lock in three days per week.

If that's not the
case, you can go.

But we're trying to
listen to the pain points
that people have with exercise
and see if we can give them
some solutions for those.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Several
things about this program
are attractive to me.

One of them you just
mentioned, which
is that by not rigidly
attaching individual workouts
to specific days of the week,
one, in theory, could say,
OK, it was--
I didn't get that
much sleep last night.

I don't feel--
I know that a lot of
people say, what is feel?

But I don't feel
recovered, or like I'm
going to get that much out
of the workout tomorrow.

So I'm-- or today-- so I'm just
going to push it forward a day.

And the ability to slide
workouts forward or back
by day I think is incredibly
valuable for the consistency's
sake.

I also really like this idea of
some of the long duration work
coming a day after
hitting the strength
and a bit of hypertrophy work.

So this would be the day two.

One thing that I've
experienced over and over
is that if I'm very sore in a
given muscle group, especially
my legs, doing
some low intensity
cardio, whether or not
it's a jog, or on the bike,
typically for me it's a
jog, or even skipping rope
and walking does seem to
dissipate the soreness.

I'm sure there's a
mechanism-- there
has to-- there's a mechanism
for everything, frankly.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: But I
like that arrangement.

And then, I also like
this idea of making sure
that there's a workout
for muscular endurance.

Because I feel like unless I've
been stuck without a good gym,
or I've decided to
specifically train
bodyweight exercise, which
I did a few years ago,
I got really excited about some
of Pavel Tsatsouline's work.

ANDY GALPIN: Sure.

Great stuff.

Yeah.

Amazing.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: He has a
book, The Naked Warrior,
which doesn't involve training
naked, although I suppose
you could if you wanted.

But it was really
about no weights.

And involved building
up to pistol squats
and one-arm push-ups,
and things of that sort,
even doing pull-ups on doors.

And I discovered that some
door frames are much stronger
than others in hotels.
[LAUGHTER]
I just accidentally
caused some damage there.

But in any case, muscular
endurance, I think,
is a really
interesting one that I
plan to incorporate
into my schedule.

But that is, I think, is
one that's often overlooked,
unless people really
have an aversion
to weights and to machines.

ANDY GALPIN: You're right.

And it shouldn't be.

Because it's pretty
low-hanging fruit.

You don't need a lot of
equipment for it typically.

It doesn't hurt that bad.

You don't often get
that sore out of it.

And you're going to feel a
nice wonderful pump afterwards.

So it's great.

And as we discussed
many times now,
it is quite effective
at hypertrophy.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah.

I also-- I don't know
if they fit specifically
with muscular endurance.

But if you look at the
physiques, for example,
on rock climbers, I
mean, they have-- to me,
of course they have--
usually the experienced climbers
have pretty remarkable body
compositions.

They tend to be lean,
and lithe, and flexible,
all those things that
many people aspire to.

But the other thing is,
their development always
looks exceedingly balanced.

You don't really
tend to see climbers
that are overdeveloped
in the torso
and underdeveloped in the arms,
or overdeveloped in the arms
despite all the climbing and
underdeveloped relatively
in the other limb movement.

And that's true
for women and men.

It's not a sport that
I participate in.

But it seems like what
they're doing is essentially
muscular endurance training.

ANDY GALPIN: Basically.

Yeah.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah.

So there's really something
there to be valued.

So that's a four-day a week
schedule with off days or rest
days inserted as needed.

And then just-- and continuing.

For those that are a bit more
committed to their fitness
and want to do a five or
six-day a week program,
would you recommend
just collapsing
some of the off days, paying
more attention to recovery,
and cycling through
more quickly?

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah, absolutely.

You could combine that
and just run that--
either one of those programs.

So you could run that three-day
week program back to back.

Do it, get that
done in six days.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Ah.

So day one, speed,
power, hypertrophy.

Day two, strength, work
with elevated heart rate,
anaerobic capacity.

And day three endurance.

And then just-- and then
just cycle through again.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah.

You take day four
off of the week.

And then you go back again.

So we would be having six
days of exercise, one day off.

And you'd be getting every
one of those adaptations
in multiple times a week.

That is almost exactly how I
would set up a six-day-a-week
program.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Great I love
the elegance and the simplicity
of that and the
thoroughness of it,
because it checks off so
many, if not all of the nine
major adaptations to
exercise that we've been
talking about these episodes.

And I suppose the one thing that
I want to highlight and pose
this also as a question is
that early in our discussions,
in a previous episode,
you mentioned that so much
of what people think of
and apply as it relates
to resistance
training is borrowed
from bodybuilding
and hypertrophy
training specifically.

Which typically involves getting
close to failure or failures,
sometimes even involving rest
pause, where you hit failure,
then set the weight
down for a few sections
and repeat these high
intensity techniques,
accentuating the negative,
so-called the centric,
et cetera.

In hearing about these
protocols of three-day-a-week,
or four-day-a-week,
six-day-a-week,
it's very clear to me that if
one is not careful to omit that
kind of thinking, and suddenly
is taking their strength work
and speed to failure, or is
pushing too hard on muscular
endurance to the point where
you're just grinding out that
very last push-up on every set,
that the amount of soreness
and the amount of recovery that
results from these workouts
might start to cause
progress issues.

So one thing that's
in the back of my mind
is, as you've described
these programs is,
that even though some
of them are very brief
or involve a minimum
of time commitment,
in particular a three-day week
but also the four-day week
schedule, that there is
a discipline involved
in making sure that you
stick to the workout
that you're supposed
to do that day.

And not go ham, as
they say, and just
throw in a couple of extra
sets of bicep curls and tricep
pushes, because you
want to do that and you
thought you could maybe you
could get away with that.

But you have to come back
pretty quickly and do
some serious, meaning devoted,
speed and power work and/or
strength work.

And if you haven't
been disciplined
about not doing certain
forms of exercise,
I could see how the whole
thing could crash quickly,
and one could think, oh,
this is just too much work,
or it's not for me.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah.

ANDREW HUBERMAN:
So this, I suppose,
is now where the
question comes, which
is, what are some
of the key points
that people need to keep in mind
when they embrace a program?

How rigidly do they
need to stay attached
to today's endurance day.

I'm just doing endurance.

Today's strength day.

I'm just doing strength work.

I'm not going to take
things to absolute failure
or beyond failure.

ANDY GALPIN: I am
absolutely happy with anyone
modifying any of
the sample programs
however they would like to.

My only recommendation for
the question you just posed
would be set your program.

And then, if you're going
to make a change, fine.

But that is a change
to your program.

In other words, don't just
make decisions every single day
and make changes.

If you're doing that, you might
as well not have a program.

And as we described
earlier, there
is clear evidence that
having a program is
better than not, regardless
of the effectiveness
of the program.

And so, my general comment
to that is, OK, fine,
a day or two, you made
some modifications.

No problem.

We're in a situation now
where you're basically
changing the workout
every day as you go,
then we just need to
write a new program.

We need to reassess
where we're at.

Because we need to
have some structure.

Look, the reality of it is,
I change the programming
I'm going to do the
day of often because
of any number of situations.

I just don't feel like it.

I way overestimated today.

We talked a little bit
in the previous episode
about autoregulation, which
is a style of periodization
and program design in which
you're adjusting based
on how you're actually
feeling that day,
but with some
specific structures.

So you're going to take
some measurements that day
and adjust.

So autoregulation is a
very, very effective tool.

You just need to make
sure that auto is dialed.

In other words, is it
because your body actually
needed something different?

Or is it because you're now
just getting a little bit lazy?

Now you're just not
feeling like it today.

So there's a little bit of an
impossible line to draw there.

Both scenarios are real--
gray area-- a lot is
real in the moment.

And so, you just need
to be a little bit
aware of having some reality
check, listening to your body,
but then also being like,
hey, no, I'm talking to you.

I'm telling you
this is the plan.

We're going to do this.

And staying within it.

It is going to be
challenging to progressively
overload and therefore get a
higher likelihood of success
at your training
program if you're just
making decisions and changing
the program right before you
work out.

You're probably
not-- you're probably
going-- for most
people, you're probably
going to choose less or off
more so than you choose more.

Now, having said that, there
are more than a few clients
that have come
through our programs
where they choose more always.

They add a set.

They add an exercise.

They add in another workout.

And that can be OK.

But we're going to track
various markers on them.

And if we see these things
consistently going down,
we're going to
identify whether they
are-- which phase of this
overtraining thing we'll
talk about next
they're actually in.

Some phases I'm OK.

Some of them I'm not.

If we're seeing certain
things happen physiologically,
we're going to make
a conversation.

We're also then going to really
think carefully about why
are you making this choice?

Do you feel like the
training isn't enough?

OK, great.

Let's modify it then.

Are you not making progress?

Or are there some other
reasons why you're doing this?

Obviously, I'm not a
psychologist or therapist.

But there are clearly situations
in which folks dose themselves
with far too much exercise
for reasons that are not
because it's productive to
their training or goals.

And if such a case,
we would probably
bring in somebody that
specializes in those areas
to clear that out and
just make sure it's like,
we're not doing this for
anxiety issues or energy things.

If it's, I just don't think the
program's enough, OK, great.

Let's go back.

Let's look at our metrics.

Let's evaluate our
tests and go there.

But if there's other
reasons, then we
may bring in somebody to
have that conversation.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah.

Usually when I've seen
people deviate from programs,
it's because they tend to
revert to something that they've
done for a long time.

It just feels really
comfortable to them.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: And it worked.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: And it was
giving them decent results.

So they're skeptical
to try something else.

Or there is a phenotype
of haphazardness
sometimes, especially
if people get
really caffeinated
before a workout
and just want to
throw something in.

And then, there's
a third category.

And this is one that
I've had to contend
with a lot in my life, which
is that I really enjoy training
with other people when
I have the opportunity.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah.

ANDREW HUBERMAN:
And a certain day
rolls around where
you're supposed
to do something and not do
other things and people say,
hey, do you want to go
for a long ocean swim?

Or you want to train?

And you end up doing some
Kenny Kane, this one's for you,
some ridiculous 20 wall
ball CrossFit type workout.

And I'm not acclimated
for that sort of thing.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah.

ANDREW HUBERMAN:
And then it does
tend to throw things
off, not because--
no pun intended, Kenny-- because
there's nothing wrong with a 20
sets of wall balls if
you're-- that's part
of your conditioning.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: But if it's
not appropriate for where
you are in your
schedule, it really
can disrupt what
you're trying to do.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Even as
a non-competitive athlete,
like myself, years
since I've competed
in any athletic program.

But as a
non-competitive athlete,
I think there's a beauty to
and a really strong incentive
to being disciplined about
the program that one follows.

As a mentor and professor that
I worked with years ago used
to say, I'd come
into his office,
all these ideas and
things I want to do.

And he'd say, let's
constrain this walk.

And then the question
you always want
to arrive at in a discussion
with your students,
as you know is, what's
the experiment exactly?

And then you go and you do
that specific experiment.

I think I view a
workout the same way,
that there are multiple
adaptations, goals,
and things that people
are trying to achieve.

Really knowing why
you're there each time
and really sticking to
that, even if it means
not training with other people.

Or I always say, well,
you can train with me,
but I'm not going
to train with you.
[LAUGHTER]
ANDY GALPIN: Selfish.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: So
that's one way to do it.

But really sticking
to a schedule
is really what allows
the progress to emerge.

But that doesn't necessarily
mean being antisocial.

You can invite people along.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah.

ANDREW HUBERMAN:
But in this case,
I'm telling people to be
the host, not the guest.

ANDY GALPIN: I have a
little bit of a rule here.

Maybe I should have answered
your question this way.

I actually like doing things
totally different occasionally.

So I'll do-- when I'm traveling,
I tend to do hotel workouts.

What I mean by that is, I will
go down to the workout room.

And I will do a set of 10 to
15 reps of every single machine
in the exact order in
which they are laid out.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Whoa.

ANDY GALPIN: Just
for the sake of fun.

Just for the sake of, OK.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: It's like the
tarot card version of workouts.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah, totally.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: It's
like, whatever comes up,
I'm going to make sense of it.

ANDY GALPIN: And you just move.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Yeah.

ANDY GALPIN: And
those are typically
things of like, I just want to
move a little bit for jet lag
and other purposes.

That's often, I wasn't going
to get to work out today.

And so, now I'm going to
do something to feel great.

I don't travel
that much, though,
so it's not really
throwing my things off.

I also, I don't get
a lot of free time.

And so, if I am
traveling, and I'm
seeing someone I haven't
seen in many years
or, for the first
time, I mean, we
got to train together this
week for the first time.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: It
was a lot of fun.

ANDY GALPIN: I'm not going
to burn that opportunity.

My rule is this though.

I'm not going to
do something that's
going to cost me
more than three days.

So I'm absolutely
happy to get out there,
and maybe tomorrow
morning, or tonight, we
go do something fun
that's off my schedule.

I'm in.

I'm in 100%.

I'm just going to
down-regulate a little bit.

I'm not going to maybe do
as much as you or as hard
as you or whatever.

I'll do more than I should.

But if it costs me tomorrow,
it was worth the exchange.

I don't have a world record
I'm setting anytime soon.

I don't have--
I got many years.

I'm happy to give up a
couple of days of exercise
to be a little sorer
than I need to be
for the exchange of
a lifetime memory.

And this stuff is
so important to me.

This stuff lands as
true lifetime memories.

I can look back-- many
of my fond memories
from my life are training
sessions with friends, whatever
it is, like doing
jujitsu with somebody
who's a world champion.

You're just like, whatever
the thing is, you're like,
that was really, really cool.

Absolutely worth
missing two days.

If it's going to be more than
three days though, where I'm
going to be so wrecked I can't
work out for five or six days,
then I'm probably like, all
right, that's kind of nonsense.

Unless it's just an
opportunity where I'm like,
I absolutely can't pass that up.

So that's how I think about it.

That doesn't happen too often
with me though, maybe once
a month.

And so I'm like, OK,
fine, I lost a day.

Reality of it is it's probably
more like once a quarter
that that happens.

So I don't really care.

So you do want to
balance joy and life.

You don't want to be so rigid
about your training program
that it ruins and robs
those experiences.

Physical activity should be fun.

Your fitness and
your training should
be something that
makes your life better,
not some task you
have to get done
so that 75 years
from now you've hit
some metric of who knows what.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Just alone in
your room with your training
logs.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah.
[LAUGHTER]
ANDREW HUBERMAN: No,
in all seriousness,
I think, you point to
the richness of life.

And you can draw these boxes
like work, relationships,
fitness, recovery.

But the boundaries between those
boxes are blurry, because--
ANDY GALPIN: Of course.

ANDREW HUBERMAN:
And I should say,
I love training with people.

I greatly enjoyed training
with you this morning,
not just because I was
receiving so many useful tips.

In fact, thank you.

First time I PR'd in a
number of things today.

ANDY GALPIN: Yeah.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: Thanks to
your input in the moment.

And that's an
irreplaceable kind of gift.

But mostly, it's the
gift of getting to train
with a colleague and friend.

So I want to underscore,
highlight, and put
an exclamation mark
behind what you just said.

Thank you once again,
and again, for giving us
so much interesting,
clear, actionable,
and at times somewhat
counterintuitive information
in order to build out
an exceptional training
program to meet any of-- and
in some cases-- all of the nine
major adaptations that
exercise can create
toward aesthetic,
performance-related, and
healthspan lifespan,
aka longevity goals.

It's really a treasure
trove of information there.

And I look forward to
our next discussion
about how to best
recover from exercise,
both within the exercise bout,
and between exercise bouts,
and in the more macroscopic
structure of a week, a month,
a year.

I can't wait.

ANDY GALPIN: I
can't wait either.

I love that topic.

And I've got a lot to
cover, so it'll be fun.

ANDREW HUBERMAN: If you're
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Thank you once again for joining
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about fitness, exercise, and
performance with Dr.

Andy
Galpin.

And as always, thank you for
your interest in science.
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